It is summer.
You and a friend of yours go to a party.
A few joints are passed around.
The roaches get put into an ashtray.
Nothing unusual.
A few weeks later you find yourself in jail with a $20,000 ransom on your head, your friend has been forced underground, and you will find out later that the charge held against you is “dispensing” two joints of marijuana (an undercover agent has found the two roaches in the ashtray).
It takes three months for your friends to find a lawyer to get your bond lowered and at the pre-trial hearing the roaches are brought out and one is empty (it’s incredible how stupid they are).
Your partner in “crime” is forced away from his friends and family for over a year and you will have incurred all kinds of legal expenses and have your life altered, at least temporarily.
Unusual? Not at all.
The person held in jail—White Panther Pun Plamandon. The person forced underground—Gary Grimshaw.
The harassment has yet to end for either of them. Gary’s pre-trial hearing starts on June 24th and Pun, of course, is on the FBI’s ten most wanted list on a bogus charge of bombing the CIA office in Ann Arbor. Gary recently turned himself in to the pigs at Traverse City with his lawyer and bondsman present.
The charge was possession and bond was set at $3,000. He was able to be present at a killer Yippie/White Panther conference which went on over the weekend of May 23-24, where discussions went on between Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and other Yippie and White Panther leaders.
The pigs wanted Grim off the set for a number of reasons.
First of all he is the Minister of Culture (Art) for the White Panthers, that’s reason enough. Besides, his artwork has been blowing minds around the Detroit area for around 4 years.
He started out in 1966 working for this paper, and he co-edited the old Warren-Forest Sun with John Sinclair. He has done many Grande posters and he was doing artwork for the MC-5 when the Panthers were associated with them.
His work is a beautiful mixture of politics and art and posters like the one he did for the Rock and Roll Revival May 30-31 of last year and the one he did for the John Sinclair benefit January 24, are still being sold and exchanged.
While underground he was doing layout for the Berkeley Tribe along with comix and posters. His main work while back in this area will be for the White Panther Party newspaper, Sundance, which will be out on or before July 4th.
It would be hard to say how long Gary will be around before they put together another lame excuse for taking him off the streets. They want Pun for sure. Grim said that they have huge blown up pictures of Pun on the walls at the sty in Traverse City.