[Marxism] White Panther

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

'60s radical takes long trip back to his roots

White Panthers' Plamondon surfaces with memoir October 27, 2004



BY MARSHA LOW

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER





ROMAIN BLANQUART/DFP

Lawrence (Pun) Plamondon lives quietly in the west Michigan town of Delton.
Plamondon, who helped lead the White Panther Party and went into hiding
after a bombing, has written a memoir. "I had people telling me that my
story is ... amazing, man," he said.

In rural western Michigan, at the end of a mile-long dirt road, past a sign
warning trespassers to keep out, lives a man who once became famous because
he tried to change the world.



He was a young revolutionary who cofounded the White Panther Party, a
fugitive on the FBI's most wanted list, a suspect in the bombing of a CIA
building in Ann Arbor.



He was a pot-smoking, acid-dropping militant who wanted to free all
political prisoners and called for an end to money.



"Everything free for everybody," was his mantra.



Lawrence (Pun) Plamondon's radicalism made him a household name.



Then he disappeared for 30 years.



Now, after putting his story on paper, Plamondon is stepping back into the
light. Late last week, his memoir, "Lost From the Ottawa: The Story of the
Journey Back," hit bookshelves in metro Detroit.



"I had people telling me that my story is ... amazing, man," Plamondon, 59,
said.



The story begins in a state mental hospital in Traverse City.





Troubled childhood

His father was a 52-year-old alcoholic. His mother was a 39-year-old woman
being treated for syphilis. He was half-Ottawa Indian; she was part-Ojibwa.
While institutionalized, they conceived a son.



Their boy was adopted by a Traverse City couple, who called him Lawrence
Robert Plamondon.



His childhood was troubled, and Plamondon left home as a teenager. At the
age of 21, he wound up in Detroit. It was 1967, a turbulent year of riot,
war protests and counterculture.



On Plum Street, a hippie enclave near Tiger Stadium, he saw young people
with long hair, strands of beads hanging from their necks, and sandals on
their feet. He began to make friends with writers, musicians, and poet Allen
Ginsberg, a New Yorker who was one of the era's most-famous troublemakers.



Plamondon made sandals for money. At night he dropped acid, smoked pot and
ate hallucinogenic mushrooms while listening to the MC5, The Doors, and Iggy
and the Stooges.



Soon he was spending time with people like hippie guru John Sinclair,
journalist Peter Werbe and artist Gary Grimshaw, who were running two
underground newspapers, the Detroit Sun and the Fifth Estate.



"They all had something going on," Plamondon said. "I wasn't a writer or a
musician, but I liked being with those people so I made myself useful
wherever I could."



In 1968, Plamondon and friends moved to Ann Arbor, where they set up a
commune in two big houses on Hill Street.



By now, Plamondon was becoming more political, and more militant. He was
struck by an interview of Huey P. Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther
Party. When asked what white people could do to support the Black Panthers,
Newton said: "They can form a White Panther Party."





Life on the run

As Plamondon tells it, the White Panther Party was founded in 1968 by
Sinclair and him.



They modeled the White Panthers after the Black Panthers, fighting for a
clean planet and the freeing of political prisoners. The White Panthers went
further, advocating rock 'n' roll, dope, sex in the streets and an end to
capitalism. Plamondon took on the affectations of a revolutionary, donning a
black motorcycle jacket and a swaggering attitude.



"He was an incredible addition to the group of people who wanted to bring
about changes," said Leni Sinclair, a former revolutionary and photographer
who was married to John Sinclair. "He was very political-minded, very
inquisitive, always studying revolutionary text trying to make himself
useful to the struggle of the time."



Plamondon went underground in October 1969 after learning he had been
indicted in connection with the bombing of the CIA office in Ann Arbor a
year earlier.



He cut his shoulder-length hair short, shaved his beard and began wearing
wing-tipped shoes. He traveled incognito for 11 months, bouncing from San
Francisco to Seattle to New York to Toronto, Germany, Italy and Algeria.



In May 1969, at the age of 24, he became the first revolutionary to make the
FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.



"I was a fish out of water," Plamondon said of being on the run. "There were
no hippie girls, no hippie guys, no rock 'n' roll, no beer. I was lonely and
homesick. I came home unannounced."



After sneaking back into the country, he planned to lay low in northern
Michigan. In July 1970, Plamondon and two White Panther members hopped into
a Volkswagen van for the ride north, chugging beer along the way. South of
the Mackinac Bridge, one of the other men began tossing empty beer cans out
of the van. A State Police trooper stopped the men, checked their identities
and forced them to pick up the trash before continuing on.



Later, police discovered that George Edward Taft III was Plamondon using
false ID. He was arrested 50 miles west of St. Ignace.



At a subsequent court appearance, Plamondon told the Free Press that his
arrest was the result of "a lack of revolutionary discipline." He spent 32
months in a federal prison as his case wound its way to the U.S. Supreme
Court.



In proceedings, federal government officials admitted to wiretapping
Plamondon's conversations without a warrant. During his trial, U.S. District
Judge Damon Keith ordered that the government release the tapes, but the
prosecution refused. The Supreme Court eventually found in Plamondon's
favor.



"During the trial Pun was hilarious, he was funny, he was totally fearless,"
said Hugh (Buck) Davis, a Detroit lawyer who represented Plamondon. "The
radical theory is that Pun's case helped bring down Nixon."



Plamondon and his friends celebrated his freedom. But within a few years,
the White Panther Party began to fall apart, and its members were forced to
find new lives.





Finding purpose

Plamondon began driving a semi-truck full of equipment for rock bands
including Kiss and Foreigner. He also joined Bob Seger on five tours,
working as a driver and personal bodyguard.



By now, Plamondon was drinking heavily and snorting cocaine. Seger
eventually fired him.



He moved from Ann Arbor to the west side of the state, where he found work
as a janitor.



More often drunk than sober, he wrecked his car, wet himself, puked in
public places, and once passed out on the side of the road in a patch of
poison ivy. The low point came, he said, when he attempted to rape his best
friend's wife. She did not press charges.



"There's few regrets in my life, but that's certainly one of them," he said.
"I feel a great deal of shame."



After several lost years, his life started yet again in 1981, when he met
Lewis Dawaquat, an Ottawa Indian who invited him to sit and smoke a
traditional pipe of tobacco. That night, Plamondon told his new friend about
the Ottawa father he never knew, about his troubles with alcohol and his
shame. His new friend suggested that he learn more about his heritage.



"I started learning the Native American stories," he said. "It might be a
story about a rabbit, but actually it was a story about generosity or values
or culture. It gave me something to believe in. I finally had something to
relate to."



Plamondon has not had a drink in 22 years, and he no longer considers
himself a political activist.



Today his long, graying hair is pulled into a ponytail and his once lithe
frame has filled out and softened. His pallid complexion hints at the hard
life he once lived.



On a 40-acre lot in Barry County, Plamondon shares a home with Patricia
Lynn, his wife of 20 years. He earns a living running a carpentry business
called Plamondon Inc. and devotes time to telling American Indian stories to
young children at libraries and museums. His friends occasionally trek to
his home for American Indian celebrations. And he can go anywhere without
being chased by cops.



What he has now, he said, is peace.



Contact MARSHA LOW at 248-351-3299 or low@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx



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