Food, wine, dope, brothers and sisters from our community: Mix these together and put them at Matthaei field and good things begin to happen. It happened Monday, June 29. We got fed, drunk, and stoned. Aside from that, some real things developed out of our Community Feast.
Our people began to come together. We brought hot dogs, rice with meat, Boones Farm apple wine, kool-aid, beer, grass, hash, and ourselves.
“Ourselves” included the Young Prides, a tuff-assed group of white and black kids indigenous to the Warren-Trumble-Forest area.
The Prides are not into the “youth culture” trip. They sport short hair and are not heavy into dope. Many of the Prides still have accents indicating their Southern heritage.
The Young Prides have a special interest in Matthaei where we had our feast. What is now Matthaei field use to be where the homes of the Young Prides stood.
Wayne State University and the City of Detroit kicked these people out and bull-dozed their houses.
If that isn’t bad enough, Wayne refuses to let these displaced kids use Matthaei’s pool, gym, and all other Wayne State facilities.
That includes Matthaei field where we purposely had our Community Feast.
The other people at the feast were Boones’ Farm Commune, White Panthers, Commonwealth Commune, and the WASCO co-ops. There were about 60 or 70 of us digging each other, the food, dope, and eventually Matthaei pool.
After gorging ourselves with food we got into some motor city wrestling matches. Young Pride Donnie got it on with White Panther Dave. Mike and Jim from Boones Farm went at it with Jim getting his ass trashed. Not giving up, Jim got smashed again by Charlie. Then Bill from WASCO got down with Charlie and he lost. Jim, asking for a rematch, finally beat Mike. At one point Jane, a -White Panther, was out-numbered by opponents. Other women came to her rescue to even the match.
It was 90 degrees that Monday and we were all hot and sweating when we finished wrestling.
It was then that we decided to liberate the pool at Matthaei.
The action was led by two girls, Tammy and Linda, from the Young Prides. Then the whole bunch of us went to the pool and jumped in clothes and all.
The lifeguard freaked and called the university cops. We continued to swim anyway. The pigs came and we ignored them. We finally left the pool when it closed at 9:00 pm.
None of us were arrested.
Together the people of the community had liberated Matthaei at least for that one day.
Maybe the pigs figured that if they let us use Matthaei for that one day we would be satisfied. But the people of the community want its use permanently.
Our community Feast made us realize that people of different cultures; Black, Appalachian and Freek, can get together for the common cause of self preservation.
We are going to continue to have our Community Feasts every Monday at Matthaei field until Wayne starts to relate to the community it surrounds.