How Radicals Make Money

A fringe benefit of being a radical is occasional free trips to Washington to see your Government in action . . . Become a subversive and see the Government from the inside. Make your Government pay your way there.

HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) pays seven cents a mile. If you're coming from California that's almost twice the youth fare: which means you can live for two months free on HUAC's tab. HUAC finances the revolution!

--Do It! by Jerry Rubin

There are other tricks in the radicals' bag, all of them similarly formulated to keep participants alive and well and living in the revolution. Often with no visible means of support, today's young radicals remain sufficiently if not well-fed, adequately if erratically clothed, and able to catch the first wind of protest and the nearest available means of transportation in time to show up in the front lines from Berkeley to Birmingham, from Chicago to Kent State. Celebrities like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman can stay close to the action without exactly pinching pennies: Rubin's book Do It! has already earned him $45,000; Hoffman's Revolution for the Hell of It and Woodstock Nation have raked in a cool $75,000 so far. Like other members of the Chicago Seven, they can command lecture fees of several hundred dollars. But for the rank and file of the movement, survival in the society they are working to destroy --and the financing of the machinery to effect that destruction--depends upon a curious combination of primitive-tribal Communism, good Samaritanism, soak-the-sucker capitalism, live-on-the-dole socialism and the riding spirit of Robin Hoodism.

Weil-Heeled Liberals. There are several means of funding the movement. A showing of Cool Hand Luke on the Berkeley campus netted $500 for the Inter-Strike Co-Ordinating Committee. Boston's Progressive Labor Party regularly holds bake sales and dances, this month drew 200 sympathizers to a rock concert at M.I.T. Biggest contributions, both of money and equipment, come from well-heeled liberals who support the radicals' drive for peace if not their revolutionary tactics and theories. The big earners among professional radicals, like Hoffman and Rubin, plow most of their profits back into the movement. Then there are "windfalls," like the one at San Francisco State College last year, when radicals seized control of the student-activities fund, amounting to more than $400,000, and parceled out large sums to black militants and an organization that was blatantly Maoist.

For radicals, there are two kinds of jobs. First and most important is work directly involved with the movement. Underground newspapers afford the steadiest income, both for the editorial staff (who usually save on individual rents by living communally in the office) and for the hawkers. Sellers of Los Angeles' Free Press buy some 5,000 copies of the paper for 160 each, sell them for a quarter, taking home as much as $15 to $20 a night. Operating expenses are low: $550 and printing equipment inherited from another radical publication are enough to publish 10,000 issues of Washington's Red Earth--Voice From the Mother Country, D.C. every ten days. "We have never figured out our profit," says Editor Mark Hess, "because we're not into that sort of thing. We're still alive and well, and that's all that matters." To raise funds for the Progressive Labor Party, Harvard Senior John Mc-Kean spent time in costume between acts during a recent university production of Marat/ Sade (he played Marat) peddling P.L. magazines to audiences who seemed as stunned by the intermission activities as by the play.

Other radicals work for organizations that support the movement. Marge Battles, one of four paid New York staff members of the Viet Nam Peace Parade Committee, makes $75 a week ($ 125 less than she picked up at her last straight job as understudy for the second lead in Cactus Flower), but she has "got used to not buying new clothes," claims "the only real expense I have is my shrink." Trudi Young, 27, will earn $3,000 this year as national coordinator of Women's Strike for Peace in Washington, D.C.; her husband's $6,000-a-year salary as national student secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation puts their combined in come into a high bracket for radicals. But, says Ron Young, "I can't feel guilty about receiving a salary in the peace movement. In comparison to what we could be earning on the outside, $9,000 really isn't much at all."

Some radicals fill time with handicrafts, making posters, clothing, bead necklaces or leather goods. Faye Evans, 23, whiles away the hours between marches by weaving and augments the income from her family trust fund by selling her wares to Houston stores. Many radicals can count on parental support, if only an occasional check from home; but since all money, even movement money, is despised, members by and large stick to the dictum: "Take only what you need."

The other acceptable kind of work for radicals is the so-called straight job --anything from driving a cab to waiting on tables to factory labor; this is regarded only as "dropping-out to work" until a movement job can be found. Mike Ansara, an early organizer of S.D.S. at Harvard and a founder of Cambridge's underground Old Mole, quit the paper for a job in an auto-repair shop. Berkeley Radical Wendy Schlesinger had a fling as a census worker; a fourth-year architecture student at Houston's Rice University earns money for the movement at a part-time job scraping furniture in an antique shop. For extra, unanticipated personal needs, he "rips off"--or steals.

Looting with Scruples. Writes Jerry Rubin: "All money represents theft. To steal from the rich is a sacred and religious act. To take what you need is an act of self-love, self-liberation. While looting, a man to his own self is true." To many radicals, that truth is self-evident indeed. Some of those who take jobs in department stores or markets steal what they can, and either resell it at a minimum price underground or donate it to communes. Some who work in restaurants or drugstores let their friends in to eat or rip what they need. Still, there are some scruples: says one Boston radical, "to steal from the A. & P. is fine, but to steal from a little grocery store run by an old couple is unthinkable."

Activists have an advantage over squares; they require far less money to live and work. An average and ample income for a typical movement person is only between $100 and $150 a month. Yet $100 can go a long way, given a whole infrastructure of radical institutions--funded largely by liberal contributions. There are co-ops providing cheap food in bulk for communal living, free clinics for quality medical aid for almost everything but major surgery, legal defense funds for free legal assistance and bail money in political cases. Radicals for the most part have no insurance and no credit payments. Furniture is inherited from friends, books borrowed from the library, transportation by bicycle or by thumb. "This country is so affluent," admits a Berkeley radical, "that we can live off its leavings."

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