"Эбби Хоффман. Steal this book (англ.) " - читать интересную книгу автора

humanity. Become an internationalist and learn to respect all life. Make war
on machines, and in particular the sterile machines of corporate death and
the robots that guard them. The duty of a revolutionary is to make love and
that means staying alive and free. That doesn't allow for cop-outs. Smoking
dope and hanging up Che's picture is no more a commitment than drinking milk
and collecting postage stamps. A revolution in consciousness is an empty
high without a revolution in the distribution of power. We are not
interested in the greening of Amerika except for the grass that will cover
its grave.
Section three - LIBERATE! - concerns itself with efforts to free stuff
(or at least make it cheap) in four cities. Sort of a quick U.S. on no
dollars a day. It begins to scratch the potential for a national effort in
this area. Since we are a nation of gypsies, dope on how to move around and
dig in anywhere is always needed. Together we can expand this section. It is
far from complete, as is the entire project. Incomplete chapters on how to
identify police agents, steal a car, run day-care centers, conduct your own
trial, organize a G.I. coffee house, start a rock and roll band and make
neat clothes, are scattered all over the floor of the cell. The book as it
now stands was completed in the late summer of 1970. For three months
manuscripts made the rounds of every major publisher. In all, over 30
rejections occurred before the decision to publish the book ourselves was
made, or rather made for us. Perhaps no other book in modern times presented
such a dilemma. Everyone agreed the book would be a commercial success. But
even greed had its limits, and the IRS and FBI following the manuscript with
their little jive rap had a telling effect. Thirty "yeses" become thirty
"noes" after "thinking it over." Liberals, who supposedly led the fight
against censorship, talked of how the book "will end free speech."
Finally the day we were bringing the proofs to the printer, Grove
consented to act as distributor. To pull a total solo trip, including
distribution, would have been neat, but such an effort would be doomed from
the start. We had tried it before and blew it. In fact, if anyone is
interested in 4,000 1969 Yippie calendars, they've got a deal. Even with a
distributor joining the fight, the battle will only begin when the books
come off the press. There is a saying that "Freedom of the press belongs to
those who own one." In past eras, this was probably the case, but now, high
speed methods of typesetting, offset printing and a host of other
developments have made substantial reductions in printing costs. Literally
anyone is free to print their own works. In even the most repressive society
imaginable, you can get away with some form of private publishing. Because
Amerika allows this, does not make it the democracy Jefferson envisioned.
Repressive tolerance is a real phenomenon. To talk of true freedom of the
press, we must talk of the availability of the channels of communication
that are designed to reach the entire population, or at least that segment
of the population that might participate in such a dialogue. Freedom of the
press belongs to those that own the distribution system. Perhaps that has
always been the case, but in a mass society where nearly everyone is
instantaneously plugged into a variety of national communications systems,
wide-spread dissemination of the information is the crux of the matter. To
make the claim that the right to print your own book means freedom of the
press is to completely misunderstand the nature of a mass society. It is