UPS – The San Francisco Mime Troupe seems to be out of the frying pan and into the fire, Canadian style.
The Troupe, which performs social satire, had just been acquitted on an obscenity charge in Denver (FE #26, March 15-30, 1967) and had left for the University of Calgary in Canada for a scheduled performance of their production of “Minstrel Show, or: Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel.”
The night before the show, members of the troupe were stopped in the Calgary Student Union Building by Calgary police, who proceeded to search them without a warrant. That night they arrested troupe member Orlin Vaughn and charged him with possession of marijuana, saying they had found a small amount of twigs and seeds in his luggage.
Vaughn was released on $1,000 bail. With the rest of the troupe, he defied a rapidly placed university ban on the group and performed at a student rally. University officials called the police to evict them from the campus. (In the confusion the police arrested six bearded professors, mistaking them for the Yankee “beatniks.”
Later the same day the troupe was stopped by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and searched. Troupe members Ron Davis and Ron Stallings were arrested on charges that Stallings’ coat contained a marijuana seed and Davis’ coat pocket contained minute traces of marijuana.
After bail was denied for both men, Vaughn returned to San Francisco to get help. He returned to Canada for his own trial March 22, but in Vancouver immigration officials held him long enough to make him a half hour late for his court appearance.
For this Vaughn was forced to forfeit his $1,000 bond and is now being held on immigration charges without bail.
According to releases this paper has received from the Communication Company, an Underground Press Syndicate member in San Francisco, the community there is outraged and have begun a defense fund for the Troupe. A benefit and mass meeting have already been held and protests lodged with the U.S. State Department. Funds maybe sent to 924 Howard St., S.F.