 1967 poster by Black Mask proclaiming "Up against the wall motherfucker", which later became the name of the group | |
| Predecessor | Black Mask |
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| Formation | January 1967 |
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Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, often shortened as The Motherfuckers or UAW/MF, was a Dadaist and Situationist anarchist affinity group based in New York City. This "street gang with analysis" was famous for its Lower East Side direct action.
The Motherfuckers grew out of a Dada-influenced art group called Black Mask with some additional people involved with the anti-Vietnam War Angry Arts week, held in January 1967. [1] Formed in 1966 by Ben Morea, a painter of Catalan origins, [2] and the poet Dan Georgakas, Black Mask produced a broadside of the same name and declared that revolutionary art should be "an integral part of life, as in primitive society, and not an appendage to wealth". [3] In May 1968, Black Mask changed its name and went underground. Their new name, Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers, came from a poem by Amiri Baraka. Abbie Hoffman characterized them as "the middle-class nightmare... an anti-media phenomenon simply because their name could not be printed". [4]
Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist and would-be assassin of Andy Warhol, was friends with Morea and associated with the Motherfuckers. [3] In the film I Shot Andy Warhol , the gun used in her attack is alleged to have been taken from Morea.
When Morea was asked in a 2005 interview by John McMillian of The New York Press how he had been able to rationalize supporting Solanas, Morea replied, "Rationalize? I didn't rationalize anything. I loved Valerie and I loathed Andy Warhol, so that's all there was to it." He then added "I mean, I didn't want to shoot him." He then added: "Andy Warhol ruined art." [5]
Prior to becoming the Motherfuckers, the Situationist International accepted Morea's group as its New York chapter. [13]
The phrase was taken from the poem, "Black People!" by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones): "The magic words are: Up against the wall, mother fucker, this is a stick up!" This, in turn, was a reference to a phrase "supposedly barked by Newark cops to Negroes under custody." [14] The poem had appeared in The New York Times in 1968 and Mark Rudd, an organizer for Columbia University's Students for a Democratic Society, provocatively quoted the line in an open letter to the university president. [15]
Most of the lyrics for the 1969 song "We Can Be Together", by the acid rock band Jefferson Airplane, were taken virtually word-for-word from a leaflet written by Motherfucker John Sundstrom, and published as "The Outlaw Page" in the East Village Other . [16] The lyrics read in part, "We are all outlaws in the eyes of America. In order to survive we steal, cheat, lie, forge, fuck, hide, and deal... Everything you say we are, we are... Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker!" The song marked the first use of the word "fuck" on U.S. television, when the group played it uncensored on The Dick Cavett Show on August 19, 1969. [17] This song also helped popularize the phrase as a counterculture rallying cry, over and beyond the immediate impact of the anarchist group.
At various times, the line became popular among several groups that came out of the sixties, from Black Panthers to feminists and even "rednecks." In 1968, David Peel and the Lower East Side included the song "Up against the Wall, Motherfucker" on their album entitled Have a Marijuana. In the 1970s, Texas country singer-songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard adapted the famous phrase for a song he wrote entitled "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother". The phrase was also used as a song title on the album Penance Soiree by the Icarus Line.
The line was famously shouted by Patty Hearst during the robbery of Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. [18]
In 1969, Columbia University history major Jim Dunnigan, who would later found Simulation Publications, Inc., published a simulation game in the March 11, 1969 edition of the Columbia Spectator [19] named Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker! [20] The game was based on recent disturbances at Columbia University and allowed the players to play either as protestors or administration with victory determined by winning over various stakeholder groups.
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is against all forms of authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including the state and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations. As a historically left-wing movement, this reading of anarchism is placed on the farthest left of the political spectrum, usually described as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement.
Motherfucker, sometimes abbreviated as mofo, mf, or mf'er, is an English-language vulgarism. It is a form of the profanity fuck. The word is usually considered highly offensive. However, in common usage, it is rarely used to refer to one person having intercourse with a woman who is a mother. Rather, the word usually refers to a mean, despicable, or vicious person; or any particularly difficult or frustrating situation. Conversely, it can be used positively, as a term of admiration, as in the term badass motherfucker (BAMF), meaning a fearless and confident person.
Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, is an American human rights activist, Muslim cleric, black separatist, and convicted murderer who was the fifth chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s. Best known as H. Rap Brown, he served as the Black Panther Party's minister of justice during a short-lived alliance between SNCC and the Black Panther Party.
Anarcho-primitivism, also known as anti-civilization anarchism, is an anarchist critique of civilization that advocates a return to non-civilized ways of life through deindustrialization, abolition of the division of labor or specialization, abandonment of large-scale organization and all technology other than prehistoric technology and the dissolution of agriculture. Anarcho-primitivists critique the origins and alleged progress of the Industrial Revolution and industrial society. According to anarcho-primitivists, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence during the Neolithic Revolution gave rise to coercion, social alienation, and social stratification.
A black bloc is a tactic used by protesters who wear black clothing, ski masks, scarves, sunglasses, motorcycle helmets with padding or other face-concealing and face-protecting items. The clothing is used to conceal wearers' identities from both the police and politically different organizations by making it difficult to distinguish between participants. It is also used to protect their faces and eyes from pepper spray, which is used by police during protests or civil unrest. The tactic also allows the group to appear as one large unified mass. Black bloc participants are often associated with anarchism, anarcho-communism, communism, libertarian socialism and the anti-globalization movement. A variant of this type of protest is the Padded bloc, where following the Tute Bianche movement protesters wear padded clothing to protect against the police.
Peter Schumann is the co-founder and director of the Bread & Puppet Theater. Born in Silesia, he was a sculptor and dancer in Germany before moving to the United States in 1961. In 1963 he founded Bread & Puppet in New York City, and in 1970 moved to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, eventually settling in Glover, Vermont, where the company still performs. Schumann's best known work is the Domestic Resurrection Circus, performed annually by the Bread and Puppet Theater until 1998. He was married to theater co-founder Elka Schumann until her death in August 2021.
According to different scholars, the history of anarchism either goes back to ancient and prehistoric ideologies and social structures, or begins in the 19th century as a formal movement. As scholars and anarchist philosophers have held a range of views on what anarchism means, it is difficult to outline its history unambiguously. Some feel anarchism is a distinct, well-defined movement stemming from 19th-century class conflict, while others identify anarchist traits long before the earliest civilisations existed.
15 minutes of fame is short-lived media publicity or celebrity of an individual or phenomenon. The expression was inspired by a quotation misattributed to Andy Warhol: "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Attributed to two other people, the first printed use was in the program for a 1968 exhibition of Warhol's work at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. The phenomenon is often used in reference to figures in the entertainment industry or other areas of popular culture, such as reality television and YouTube.
The Days of Rage were a series of protests during three days in October 1969 in Chicago, organized by the emerging Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
Unpopular Books is a publisher in London's East End, producing leaflets, pamphlets, and books.
The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon and political movement that developed in the Western world during the mid-20th century. It began in the early 1960s, and continued through the early 1970s. It is often synonymous with cultural liberalism and with the various social changes of the decade. The effects of the movement have been ongoing to the present day. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the civil rights movement in the United States had made significant progress, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and with the intensification of the Vietnam War that same year, it became revolutionary to some. As the movement progressed, widespread social tensions also developed concerning other issues, and tended to flow along generational lines regarding respect for the individual, human sexuality, women's rights, traditional modes of authority, rights of people of color, end of racial segregation, experimentation with psychoactive drugs, and differing interpretations of the American Dream. Many key movements related to these issues were born or advanced within the counterculture of the 1960s.
The Boston Tea Party was a concert venue located first at 53 Berkeley Street in the South End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, and later relocated to 15 Lansdowne Street in the former site of competitor, the Ark, in Boston's Kenmore Square neighborhood, across the street from Fenway Park. It operated from 1967 to the end of 1970. Its closing was due in part to the increasing cost of hiring bands who were playing more and more at large outdoor festivals and arena rock concerts.
Anarchism in Korea dates back to the Korean independence movement in Korea under Japanese rule (1910-1945). Korean anarchists federated across their end of the continent, including forming groups on the Japanese mainland and in Manchuria, but their efforts were perforated by regional and world wars.
Contemporary anarchism within the history of anarchism is the period of the anarchist movement continuing from the end of World War II and into the present. Since the last third of the 20th century, anarchists have been involved in anti-globalisation, peace, squatter and student protest movements. Anarchists have participated in armed revolutions such as in those that created the Makhnovshchina and Revolutionary Catalonia, and anarchist political organizations such as the International Workers' Association and the Industrial Workers of the World have existed since the 20th century. Within contemporary anarchism, the anti-capitalism of classical anarchism has remained prominent.
The Motherfucker with the Hat is a 2011 play by Stephen Adly Guirgis. The show is described as "a high-octane verbal cage match about love, fidelity and misplaced haberdashery."
Angry Arts Week was an event organised by a group of radical artists based in Lower East Side, New York City in January 1967. It brought together such people as Michael Brown of the Pageant Players, Peter Schumann from the Bread and Puppet Theatre Osha Neumann, performance artist Carolee Schneemann, and the painter Ben Morea. They were particularly active opposing the Vietnam War.
The Pageant Players were a quasi-Marxist guerrilla street theatre group active in New York City from 1965 to 71. Their first performance was of The Paper Tiger Pageant in November 1965. They were founded by Michael Brown. They participated in Angry Arts week in January 1967.
The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who, in reaction to the era's liberal establishment, campaigned for freer lifestyles on a broad range of social issues such as feminism, gay rights, drug policy reforms, and gender relations. The New Left differs from the traditional left in that it tended to acknowledge the struggle for various forms of social justice, whereas previous movements prioritized explicitly economic goals. However, many have used the term "New Left" to describe an evolution, continuation, and revitalization of traditional leftist goals.
Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory and tendency within the anarchist movement that emphasizes insurrection as a revolutionary practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political program and periodic congresses. Instead, insurrectionary anarchists advocate informal organization and small affinity group based organization. Insurrectionary anarchists put value in attack, permanent class conflict and a refusal to negotiate or compromise with class enemies.
The Newsreel, most frequently called Newsreel, was an American filmmaking collective founded in New York City in late 1967. In keeping with the radical student/youth, antiwar and Black power movements of the time, the group explicitly described its purpose as using "films and other propaganda in aiding the revolutionary movement." The organization quickly established other chapters in San Francisco, Boston, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and Puerto Rico, and soon claimed "150 full time activists in its 9 regional offices." Co-founder Robert Kramer called for "films that unnerve, that shake people's assumptions…[that] explode like grenades in people’s faces, or open minds like a good can opener." Their film's production logo was a flashing graphic of The Newsreel moving in and out violently in cadence with the staccato sounds of a machine gun. A contemporary issue of Film Quarterly described it as "the cinematic equivalent of Leroi Jones's line 'I want poems that can shoot bullets.'" The films produced by Newsreel soon became regular viewing at leftwing political gatherings during the late 1960s and early 1970s; seen in "parks, church basements, on the walls of buildings, in union halls, even at Woodstock." This history has been largely ignored by film and academic historians causing the academic Nathan Rosenberger to remark: "it is curious that Newsreel only occasionally shows up in historical studies of the decade."
In 1967, when Secretary of State Dean Rusk tried to attend a banquet of the Foreign Policy Association in New York, a radical group called Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers (often called "the Motherfuckers" for short) threw eggs, rocks and bags of cows' blood
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