Contents
1. Transcript
1.1. Session 1 ( December 5, 2005)
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COLLINGS
- So, OK. And I'll just ID the tape here. Jane Collings interviewing Burt
Wilson at the UCLA Oral History Program office. December 5th, 2005.
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WILSON
- Oh, wait a minute.
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COLLINGS
- OK. I'll pause.
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WILSON
- That's protected. There.
-
COLLINGS
- Are you OK now?
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WILSON
- OK. All right. Go ahead.
-
COLLINGS
- OK. I'm -- I -- you -- OK. All right. So good morning, Burt.
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WILSON
- Good morning.
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COLLINGS
- Glad you could find us OK.
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WILSON
- Thank you very much.
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COLLINGS
- Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about where and when
you were born?
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WILSON
- I was born January 24th, 1933, in Stockton, California. I moved to
Sacramento when I was three. Went all through Sacramento schools,
including two years to Sacramento Junior College, now City College,
where I got an A.A. degree. And then in my last semester, I was Men's
vice president, and we went down to southern California my first trip
for a student government conference. And the dean was from USC, and he
took me through the campus, and there was Channel 28 right on the campus
at that time. And I came back, and I tore up my admission to College of
the Pacific [now University of the Pacific], where I was going to study
radio, and wrote down to USC and got my acceptance three days before the
semester started. Drove down in my '38 Chevy, and up to the Student
Union; said, "I need a room."
-
- So I spent two years at USC, and graduated with an A.B. degree in
Telecommunications, as they called it then, and the first class to
receive a degree in basically television production. I then went back to
Sacramento, started a jazz band -- the first jazz band to play in a
Shakey's Pizza Parlor -- I played trombone and piano -- and -- which was
a landmark thing. I then went in the Army, and ended up in Fort Carson,
Colorado, where I worked for Army P. I. O. [Public Information Office]
-- as a radio announcer. And I was shipped to Germany, and I was
eventually switched over to Special Service and ordered by the
commanding general to produce Kiss Me, Kate for his going-away party
(laughter) and to tour it throughout Europe to the troops.
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- I came home; I married a German girl in Germany. I speak fluent German,
so it's --
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COLLINGS
- Before you went over?
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WILSON
- No. I took -- I -- German was my language all through college, however.
And I had to ask for her hand in German. (laughter) And we got married.
I got out in 1958, December; came back to Sacramento. And within a few
months, I was hired as a copywriter at KXOA Radio. Three months later, I
was hired as a producer at KCRA Television. And six months after that,
another fellow and I opened up our own advertising agency in Sacramento,
backed by two people. We were all of 26 years old and in business for
ourselves. (laughter)
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- The advertising agency got to be a rat race, and I quit it in 1965 and
wanted to change my life, because I'd had a mild heart attack at the age
of 30 because I was doing everything myself. And I moved down here to
Venice, walked my dog on a beach for a couple of months, and played
piano at [Venice] Shakey's Pizza Parlor in Santa Monica. Then I decided
to go back into the advertising business, but on my terms, and I hooked
up with a local agency: Boylhart Lovett and Dean. I brought the Shakey's
account into them. They -- then they hired a whole bunch of guys that --
the business is very competitive, and it was dog eat dog, and I didn't
like that part of it, and especially with the other guys they hired,
which they thought they were creative. I thought they were goons.
-
- So I went out and got a better job, at $5,000 more a year, at Needham
Harper and Steers, a worldwide agency, as a group creative director. So
I went from the account side to the creative side, because I'd always
done my own creative. And I did a campaign -- a great campaign for Wynn
Oil Company for their gasoline additive called Spitfire -- it was "give
your car a kick in the gas." And the creative director became jealous of
me. (laughter) And we eventually had it out. He put his mistress in
charge of the production of my unit, and told her to control me. So I
went to the boss and I told him what happened; he says, "Well, Burt, you
leave me no recourse but to fire you." So I got fired.
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COLLINGS
- You walked right into that one. (laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- (laughter) Probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I then went
to work later for a movie guy, an old movie guy, Mort Goodman, at the
Goodman Organization, and through that I became involved in writing
campaigns for American International Pictures. And I soon quit the
Goodman Organization and went freelance, and I wrote and produced
broadcast radio and television campaigns for American International
Pictures all during their exploitation years, you know? Dr. Phibes Rises
Again, Frogs: Today the Pond, Tomorrow the World -- all of that stuff.
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COLLINGS
- So what were you planning to be when you grew up? You know, when you were
in your early days (inaudible)?
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WILSON
- Believe it or not, the first thing I ever wanted to be was a forest
ranger. My father wanted me to be a structural engineer.
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COLLINGS
- Is that what he was?
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WILSON
- But I had always demonstrated a talent for advertising and promotion in
one -- and so it was -- it became a natural thing for me to get into
that.
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COLLINGS
- So you were sort of headed in this direction even during your early --
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WILSON
- Yes.
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COLLINGS
- -- school years, and...? Yeah.
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WILSON
- Yes. The most important thing as far as I'm concerned that happened to
me: I was in the Army with a guy by the name of John Erwin, who was an
actor whose claim to fame is he was the voice of the Morris the Cat
commercials. And we were very good friends, and I hooked up with him
when I moved down here. I was divorced by then. And John would never go
out with me on Thursday nights. I said, "Why not, John?" He said, "Well,
you wouldn't be interested."
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- So it turned out he was going to a meeting of a metaphysical teaching
called Agni Yoga. A-G-N-I is the Sanskrit word for fire. I said, "I'm
into that!" (laughter)
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COLLINGS
- What year was this?
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WILSON
- This was 1966. So in 1966, I met my guru, Ralph Houston, when he came out
to Los Angeles in October. (coughs) And while we were meditating -- this
is -- this gets a little far out, so...
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COLLINGS
- That's OK.
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WILSON
- While we were meditating, I heard him say in my consciousness, "Go to
Watts." And so I went up to him after the meditation, and I said, "Did
you send me a message in meditation." He said, "Yeeeees," like he would
do. "Was it 'go to Watts'?" I said? "Yeeeees." "Well, what did you
mean?" He says, "Well, there's some people down there who need help, and
maybe you can help out." And that's all the direction I got.
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- So what it is I did: I ended up buying a lot of paint and some ladders --
and I had a convertible -- and I went to Watts, and I hooked up with the
Westminster Neighborhood Association there. And I said, "Look, I've got
all this paint -- can you tell me somebody -- a lady who needs her house
painted, and I'll go paint it?" They said, "Fine." So I went over and
painted a house, and the first thing I noticed was I had -- well, I was
the only white guy down there, so (laughter) that was an attraction in
and -- but all the kids came.
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- So the next week that I went down on a weekend, I bought a lot of small
brushes for the kids. And pretty soon, I had the kids on a whole block
painting a house, you see, with me. And they were having fun. They
didn't think it was work, you know? And I --
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COLLINGS
- Tom Sawyer. (laughter)
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WILSON
- -- I saw a real value in that. So --
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COLLINGS
- Now, was -- oh, I'm sorry.
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WILSON
- Go ahead.
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COLLINGS
- Was this your first sort of social project? Because it sounds like you
had been doing advertising --
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WILSON
- Well, my first social --
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COLLINGS
- -- before this.
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WILSON
- -- project was in Sacramento, which was kind of funny because the
Sacramento Bee newspaper, at that time run by the matriarch of the
McClatchy family, Eleanor [McClatchy], they were -- they wanted to
revitalize First and Second Street, Front Street and Second Street in
Sacramento and make something out of it. And the cry became, "Where are
the bums going to go?" You know, they're going to drive the poor people
out of that section -- where were they going to go? And were they going
to tear down historic buildings?
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- So as it turned out, I knew -- because I'm an old-time Sacramentan --
that the McClatchy newspaper company tore down the old Buffalo Brewery,
which was a landmark, to build their new newspaper plant. So we started
a campaign: "Restore the Buffalo Brewery." (laughter) And it became
quite a local attraction. We had sweatshirts and t-shirts, and badges
and bumper stickers...
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COLLINGS
- Now, how old were you at this time?
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WILSON
- I was twenty -- let's see. I was probably about 29.
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COLLINGS
- OK. So this was your first foray --
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WILSON
- This was my first --
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COLLINGS
- -- into the...?
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WILSON
- -- foray into that. But where I really got involved was in Watts. And I
came in contact with a guy by the name of Ned Coll. He later ran for
President. (laughter) He was the one that had his -- who -- up in the
campaign up in New Hampshire put a rat on a table and said, "This is
what poor people have to deal with." Ned -- well, let me say first of
all, the death of President Kennedy changed my life. It really changed
my life. I got to thinking in terms other than myself, other than my own
self-interest. And he's the one who did it, because that was, you know,
"Ask not what your country can do" --
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COLLINGS
- So you had --
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WILSON
- -- "for you, but" --
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COLLINGS
- -- you had been interested in him before then? Yeah?
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WILSON
- No! No, not that much. But with his death, it all of a sudden penetrated
into me because that was all that was on television at that time.
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- And so I became the West Coast chapter of the Revitalization Corps, which
Robert [F.] Kennedy was really interested in. And I stayed in Watts for
six years, every weekend except Christmas and Easter. I was in Watts
Saturday and Sunday, and sometimes Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and
Sunday. And since I was working freelance, I could do that. And the
people -- so I was on the board of 11 different black organizations,
including the National Association of Negro Women.
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COLLINGS
- That's an unusual placement. (laughter)
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WILSON
- Yeah, it is. And they told me later, they said, "Well, we watched you
closely to see what you were going to do, and we gave you six months,
and you -- it turned out OK because you weren't down there taking
money." See, I never -- this was a completely volunteer organization. At
the time, I had a program -- a public service program -- on KLAC called
"What You Can Do for Your Country." And I produced interviews with
people in Watts and put them on the air. And this is why I was invited
to high schools and colleges all over southern California to talk about
the work, and we ran thousands of people through the program -- the
first time they'd ever been in the ghetto; the first time they'd ever
been to Watts. And I thought that was doing a lot of good.
-
- But you see, at the time -- and this is one of the reasons that really
made me go there also -- the idea to save Watts was to throw money at
it. And what that meant was they took people, and they just recycled
them through training programs in which they earned $4 an hour, or
something like that. And that was called "doing something for the pool
people of Watts." Well, it was nothing -- absolutely nothing.
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- I was involved with Budd Schulberg and his brother Bob, who is now
deceased, too, in the Watts Writers Workshop. And I had a great deal --
I had a -- I was well known throughout the community at the time, and we
had hundred -- including Darryl Strawberry, the baseball star, was one
of our charges. And near the end, I got involved -- one of the people in
Watts -- you see, the city had a plan to build townhouses in the area
around 103rd Street, which --
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COLLINGS
- And this was all after the riots?
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WILSON
- --- was all ravaged, yes, after the riots. And so they were busy
condemning land and buying up people's land, and things like that. And
their plan was to put up a ten-foot wall around this community, with a
fire exit and an entrance. Now, we all knew -- at least I knew at that
time -- that this was an old police plan in which you could control a
maximum amount of people with a minimum amount of effort. And so I
started a campaign called "No Walls in Watts." And Art Kunkin, who was
the editor of the Free Press at that time, gave me a front page story
and picture, and printed 1,000 extra copies, and let me distribute them
around the community.
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- Now, the community was all on my side, but Mayor Yorty and City Hall was
not. And (coughs) I was offered two bribes. The first thing they asked
me was, "Well, Mr. Wilson, we're going to give you a contract to fill
sandbags for $10,000." And I said --
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COLLINGS
- But you weren't even in the contracting business.
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WILSON
- No, no, no. But this is the way the city pays people off, you see. So I
get ten -- supposedly, I get $10,000; I hire the kids at $1 an hour to
fill the sandbags, complete the contract, and I keep $9,000. That's the
thing. And I said no. (laughter) "No," I said, "I'm not your boy."
-
- So then they called me in to a guy named Washington, who was later, I
believe, indicted in a kickback scandal. He was one of the real skimmers
of the Yorty administration. And he sat me down in front of his desk and
said, "Burt, what do you want? How much do you want, and what do you
want?" And I said, "I want the people of Watts to have better housing,
single-family houses on plots of land with air between the houses. No
townhouse, no ten-foot wall."
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- So the people asked me to be on the Watts Community Development Advisory
Committee. So one of my friends whom I'm staying with now, Garth
Sheriff, was an architect. And what we did, which was the first time
this was ever done in the history of a community redevelopment project:
we drew up our own plan according to what the people want. And I'll
never forget going down to the City Council, to Calvin Hamilton, who was
the socialite of whatever they call it in charge of building in Los
Angeles -- some kind of manager. And we're sitting there, and there's a
lot of people in -- black people in the audience, and we're talking
about the project and what we want. And all of a sudden, he plays the
race card. He says, "Well, all I see out here are two white guys and a
plan." And a [black] minister stood up in the audience. He stood up and
he said, "Mr. Hamilton, these gentlemen speak for us." (laughter) And
you should've seen his face! I mean, he was -- that was one of my
greatest experiences.
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- Well, there were a lot of interests in this because there was a lot of
money involved here. Plus raising the city tax base --
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COLLINGS
- A lot of contracting money?
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WILSON
- Yes. Contracting money and power. And power. And least of all, raising
the tax base by getting more density per lot than before. But that
wasn't what the people wanted. As an example, they had a manufactured
house manufacturer come down and build a model home on 103rd Street.
They had lights on it all night; they had a 24-hour guard. It was
furnished inside and everything, beautiful chips around the -- redwood
chips around the lot and everything. It disappeared overnight.
(laughter) The guard said, "I didn't see anything!" They -- see, if the
people of Watts didn't like something, that's the way they let people
know that people were coming down there to exploit them, you see? And
since I wasn't taking any money, and government money, and we were a
non-funded volunteer organization, I was welcome. I wasn't trying to rip
them off.
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COLLINGS
- Yeah. So how did this all -- oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.
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WILSON
- Go ahead.
-
- Well, that was an indication of how they felt about housing, you see. And
I was trying to articulate that for them in the meetings. So in the end,
they sent a guy to beat me up in the meetings -- his name was Lewis
Green -- who eventually tried to run for City Council, and he was
Yorty's man [Lewis Green]. He was an inch taller than I was, and I was
coming out of the bathroom at night, and he had the Free Press in his
hand, and he punched me in the chest and he said, "We don't like what
you're doing here." And I looked at him and I said, "Well, I don't need
this." So I went and sat down back in the meeting. But he persists and
comes up to me, and grabs my shirt and pulls me up, and he's got his
fist like this. And my first reaction was, "Hey, this is my best suit!"
(laughter) You know?
-
- And then he starts dragging me across the room, and I'm thinking, "Should
I hit him? I wonder what it feels like. I've never hit anybody in my
life." And by -- see, the plan was to get me to hit him first. I was to
throw the first blow, and then I would be the aggressor and so forth.
But it took several seconds -- maybe 15 seconds -- and I didn't throw a
punch, and so people separated us. Then I had him for assault. And I
gave everybody a declaration of what they had seen there. There were 12
people. And I said to myself, if I get six people to back me up on this,
I will go ahead and bring charges against him. I got three. I got three.
-
- So I quit, because you see, that committee, the mayor had his own people
on there, the police had their own people on there... I mean, that
opened my eyes to what politics and city politics is really all about,
and the fact that you could get hurt --
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COLLINGS
- Well, yeah. I think you are --
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WILSON
- -- if you are --
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COLLINGS
- -- probably get -- starting to be --
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WILSON
- "You are" --
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COLLINGS
- a real danger.
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WILSON
- -- "interfering with the natural form of nature, Mr. Wilson!" (laughter)
And...
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COLLINGS
- So this all started with just driving down on weekends while you were
working for the ad -- one of the ad agencies?
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WILSON
- Yes, yes.
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COLLINGS
- Which one were you at at the time?
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WILSON
- Boylhart Lovett and Dean. Interestingly enough, I was nominated for
Advertising Man of the Year for this work, but I lost to [H. R.] Bob
Haldeman, (laughter) who they don't even recognize anymore because he's
a convicted felon! (laughter)
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COLLINGS
- (laughter) That's pretty ironic.
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WILSON
- It is. But I know -- you see, I was to meet Robert [F.] Kennedy on June
9th, and he was killed on June 6th, which was probably one of the
saddest days of my life because I know he was very interested in our
work, and I know I would have gone to Washington with him. Because he
put out a proclamation once that this was an outstanding example of
individual and community volunteer involvement. And it was. It was all
volunteer, and the people who came down there came down there of their
own accord. I lost a whole new -- I lost a set of old friends who were
all afraid that I was going to ask them to join me -- and I never did; I
never asked anybody -- and developed a whole new other set of friends,
who were interested in social issues and doing something about it. So...
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COLLINGS
- Right. So how did this all -- OK, you started going down there on
weekends, and then you started meeting -- you started going down there
on weekends, down to Watts, and you started meeting some people in the
neighborhood. And then -- but how did that transition from just helping
out people by painting houses into a whole organization? I mean, how --
what was the -- what were the steps in there?
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WILSON
- Well, you see -- and we will get to this later with CAUSE -- radio was my
organizing tool. It was my electronic town hall. And people, young
people who listened to the program, invited me to speak. I told them
that what they were doing, they always liked it because there was no
money involved, you see? And so they came down to join me. Now, out of
(coughs) probably about every 50 people -- and there were thousands who
came down to work a weekend in the ghetto -- one would stay. One would
really understand what was going on there in the depth of the whole
thing, and stay.
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COLLINGS
- And people were originally hearing about it through your radio program?
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WILSON
- That's correct. Or through -- the newspaper wrote some articles about it,
and you know, I was a darling of the advertising -- (laughter) you know,
I'll tell you a funny thing. The advertising agencies, the Western
States Advertising Association, which nominated for -- me for Ad Man of
the Year, decided they were going to give me $500. It was the hardest
$500 ever, because they insisted that I incorporate -- and they have a
person on the board -- and all this for a lousy $500
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COLLINGS
- Yeah. This was $500 toward the project?
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WILSON
- Yes, yes. And to make sure I didn't cheat or spend it on something, I
think -- well, that was -- that eventually killed the program. Well, no
-- what eventually killed the program was the people not supporting me
on the Advisory Committee. But years later -- you see, there was a guy
from the Western States Advertising Agency which led the effort to give
me $500. Years later, I read his resume, and he put on there,
"Spearheaded a program in Watts to help..." (laughter) He was, you know,
undercutting everything and grabbing everything for himself. That's --
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COLLINGS
- Now, I'm sorry; you may have --
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WILSON
- -- advertising.
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COLLINGS
- -- said this, but what was the name of the radio program at the time?
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WILSON
- "What You Can Do for Your Country." I won a Major Armstrong Award from
Columbia University as the Best FM Public Service Program in the United
States.
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COLLINGS
- And you were broadcasting from USC [University of Southern California] at
this point? The --
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WILSON
- No, no.
-
WILSON
- -- radio station at...?
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WILSON
- I was broadcasting from KLAC, which was a talk radio station at the time.
It had Mort Sahl, Joe Pine...a lot of other guys. Jack Thayer was the
head of KLAC, the general manager, and he and I became very good friends
later when he went through a bad time, and evidently -- and eventually
ended up in New York City as the head of NBC [National Broadcasting
Company] Radio. And I had later moved to New York City, so we got
together.
-
- But he deserves credit: the -- my salesman, Bill Powell, asked him about
it, and he said, "Well, I've got a program on an FM station, KMET. I
could give you an hour between eight and nine in the morning on
Sundays." And I said, "I'll take it." You know, I didn't care what it
was. But FM was just getting popular. It was an underground music
station then, and The Beemer was the disk jockey on KMET FM. And I had
public service announcements all over the station day and night, because
they had no commercials advertising my program. So what a -- an aid.
What a fantastic aid, you see. And here am I, a trained radio/television
guy, (laughter) and able to understand how to use the medium. I later
took an idea to George Green, who was the sales manager of KABC, the
biggest talk radio outfit in time, and George looks at it and says,
"Nobody's going to do this! Nobody's going to do that!" You know? And he
just couldn't see past the commercial possibilities of radio, of really
getting involved in public service through motivating people to do
something in their own communities. That was the whole idea. And it
worked.
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COLLINGS
- Now, just to backtrack a little bit, did your parents have any kind of
public service interests?
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WILSON
- Absolutely not. My father -- my mother [Mabel Ethyl Wilson] was
institutionalized when I was 12. She was a schizophrenic, unfortunately.
I mean, today, she would probably, you know, take a pill, and because it
was a gene thing, I think the whole -- that -- her whole side of the
family had problems. And my sister [Gail June Wilson] was depressed most
of her life, too, so it was a gene thing that didn't affect the males.
And my father [Wilburt William Wilson] was completely against -- well,
he was never for what I was doing. He thought I was interfering and
should be making money, and all of this stuff. (laughter)
-
- So it -- I got no support. But I mean, I was used to not having support
from my family anyway. And in effect, by 1965, I had a much better
family, which were the people who were working for me and working with
me in Watts. See, the whole thing -- we said in the community, "We're
here to work WITH people rather than FOR people." And they understood
that. And they fed us; they would make chicken for us when we were down
there, you know? And I said, "Look, we're not here to paint your house
-- we're here to help YOU paint your house." You see? And then we
attracted all the kids. And then on weekends, we'd take the kids on
trips around the -- oh, we went to -- took them to see a submarine, we
took them fishing, we took them to Mt. Wilson -- Sunday was the field
trip day. And we got all of these cars from all of our members, and we'd
load the kids in, and the mothers were so glad to see them go, you know?
(laughter) And we never had any accidents or anything like that, thank
god, but -- we came close, but... I mean, that was really a lot of fun.
That was a lot of fun.
-
- And people always asked me, "Well, what good did you do, Burt?" I said,
"I don't know." You don't do it for measurable results, you know? Sooner
or later -- and this is what happened to me -- you do it because you
have a deeper understanding of life. And like when my guru said to me,
he said, "You have some abilities which you can use there." And
President Kennedy said, "Those to whom much has been given, much is to
be expected." And that meant something to me, you see? So I -- and
having gone through the money phase -- I was making $36,000 a year in
1963, you know? That's like, what? $250-300,000 today, you know? I had
more money than I knew what to do with, and I wasn't happy. (laughter)
So...
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COLLINGS
- And did -- were you affected at all by the -- what was going on in the
rest of the country? The Civil Rights movement and...?
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WILSON
- Well, I was --
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COLLINGS
- Was this kind of -- or was this more of a personal mission?
-
WILSON
- The Civil Rights movement was -- I believed I was doing my part with the
Watts thing, because because of that -- you see, people who don't want
to get personally involved love to have people talk about it to their
club, (laughter) you know? And you may reach one person, two -- I went
around to schools, and in those days, in the Sixties, the late Sixties,
I was also on the steering committee of the antiwar movement here in
L.A. at the time at USC, because I got involved -- or the Kennedy Action
Corps at USC became one of my people who came to be involved with -- and
later, I had a talk show on KUSC, which helped a lot, too. But I was
also in the antiwar movement, and everybody on the steering committee
got investigated by the IRS the next year. (laughter) Every --
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COLLINGS
- (laughter) What a coincidence!
-
WILSON
- -- one of us. Every one of us. But you know, I was in my 30s by that
time, and they were all 17 and 18, but they understood -- kids at that
time understood -- they all had a social -- not all of them, but many of
them, more than usual, had a social consciousness. And they understand
-- they understood, and by the fact that I had done something and was
doing something, I became an example for them. And I was aware of that
responsibility, too. But I was also aware that you can not ask people to
do anything. You can not even subtly coerce by appealing to their sense
of this and that and the other thing. It has to be a free will decision;
otherwise, it's no good.
-
COLLINGS
- OK. If you -- sorry, I hate to sort of keep dragging you back, but I just
wanted to kind of --
-
WILSON
- Sure.
-
COLLINGS
- -- establish a few... What were the -- sort of the date when you began to
get into yoga and this kind of spiritual exploration?
-
WILSON
- OK.
-
COLLINGS
- And -- I'm sorry, but what -- to ask you, but when did you do your first
broadcast, and your first radio broadcast, and your first TV
broadcasting?
-
WILSON
- Well --
-
COLLINGS
- Those are two separate questions.
-
WILSON
- OK. Well, the TV comes later. Well, actually, TV, when I was in
Sacramento at my ad agency, I wrote and produced and was the talent in
all of my -- most of my radio and television commercials. So I was on
television doing commercials -- funny commercials and straight
commercials.
-
COLLINGS
- And what year -- what -- when -- what year did you start --
-
COLLINGS
- This was --
-
COLLINGS
- -- doing that?
-
WILSON
- -- '60-65. '60-65. I did the first remote television commercial in
Sacramento. I used to dress up in pantaloons and sweater with the big
"W," and I was "Daring Dick Waring," the car dealer's mascot, on
Saturday mornings. And all of that got old pretty fast. I also did the
news on the radio when I first went to work for KXOA, which was my first
job.
-
COLLINGS
- And so the first radio job was at -- what year was that?
-
WILSON
- The first -- my first radio job was KLAC in 1968. '68.
-
COLLINGS
- OK. I'm just trying to -- just wondering when the media really got going
here. Right. And then earlier than that, you had begun to get into yoga
and some other kinds of spiritual...?
-
WILSON
- I moved to Los Angeles in 1965. In 1966, I got into yoga. Now, this was
not a "funny position" type yoga -- it's metaphysical philosophy is what
it is. And I had an epiphany when I was ten years old. I was out in the
streets in Sacramento on a hot night playing hide and go seek, and I
stretched out on a lawn after a particularly strenuous game, and I
looked up in the sky. And I had seen stars before, but I connected with
a star at that time -- at least, it seems to me that it... And I
received a feeling about that which I couldn't put into words until a
few years later, when I was able to articulate it. And it said that --
basically, it's that there's more going on than meets the eye, and it is
all knowable. And ever since then, I wanted to know it. (laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. So let's know it!
-
WILSON
- And that's what this book is all about, you see. This is an alternative
order of creation.
-
COLLINGS
- Well, I'm looking forward to taking at look at it. So...
-
COLLINGS
- You know, while we're on the subject of you being ten, I understand that
you're going to be doing some -- you're participating in a documentary
about ten-year olds' remembrances of World War II?
-
WILSON
- Yes. Ken Burns' Florentine Films is finishing up a documentary now called
The War, and it's seen through the eyes of ten-year olds in the Forties
-- you know, approximately; give or take a few years -- and in five
small towns in the United States, and Sacramento was one of the towns.
And somehow they got hold of me. And so that's going to be out next
year.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. And so what were your memories of World War II?
-
WILSON
- Well, my memories was -- the war never touched us, you know? It's like
now and the Iraq war, you don't see the body bags like you did in the
Vietnam War, you know? And in those days, the war was even hidden more
from you, and the only way you had any contact with -- certainly not in
sleep cowtown Sacramento in those years -- was when a neighbor got
killed, or -- you know, and we thought rationing was fun, and going
around collecting aluminum and cardboard... The thing that -- one of the
things they're going to use is I had an English refugee friend, Royd
Buchanan, and he came over to my house one day. In those days, we called
people out from the street. "Burt, Burt!" "Hi, Royd." He says, "You know
what a dirty German sub did?" And I said, "No, what?" And he says, "It
killed my father." And looking back, I can remember -- I said I didn't
know what to do about that. I didn't know how to react, except say, "I'm
sorry, you know?
-
- And -- but other than that, we were actually shielded from the war.
Interestingly enough, though, my mother was an America First [member],
and she used to take me to meetings where they -- and I loved their
song: "You can defend America; nobody will if you won't." (laughter) And
Lindbergh, who was a later hero of mine, he was a big leader of that
movement.
-
- My mother, I -- you know, I have to say my mother did instill with me --
before she went off -- a social consciousness. I really have to say that
now, because she was like a defender of lost causes. And she had this
side to her that felt people's misery, you know? And she also played the
piano by ear, and I play the piano by ear. And so I think that -- for
instance, the first time I used the "N" word, she said -- she sat me
down; she said, "Now, Burt, I want you to -- I don't want you to ever --
hear you use -- and this is why." And so forth and so on. And I
understood it, you know? And I never did it again. (laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- OK. So just -- we've got you down in -- we've got the assassination of
Kennedy, which struck you quite a bit in '63. And you had had your heart
attack prior to that?
-
WILSON
- Heart attack was in 1963.
-
COLLINGS
- Oh, it was the same...?
-
WILSON
- Yeah. Yeah.
-
COLLINGS
- And then you come down to Los Angeles, and you get involved in the
philosophical exploration?
-
WILSON
- Yes.
-
COLLINGS
- OK. Meditation?
-
WILSON
- And that led to my participation in Watts and other things. Then in 1970,
because of my radio program, the Tribal Council of the Taos Pueblo
Indians contacted me and asked me for help. And who knows why they call
me? Although I know I was an Indian in a past -- a southwest Indian in a
past life. But -- and interestingly enough, my guru had healed their
chief years and years -- it's 20 or 30 years later. Coughed up cancer.
And...
-
- So anyway, they ask me to help them, because the governor, the lieutenant
war chief, and the secretary were coming into Los Angeles, and this was
the first time in 5,000 years that the Pueblo leadership had ever left
the pueblo.
-
COLLINGS
- Really?
-
WILSON
- Yes. In 5,000 years. And the reason they were is because the government
wanted to confiscate their Blue Lake lands, which was the Indian church.
This is where they sent the braves out for a year for their year of
initiation and everything to live on their own off the land and so
forth. And the government wanted to confiscate that land and put up a
sawmill and a ski run. And of course, they thought it would be
blasphemy.
-
- So what I did is I did -- I managed -- I created and managed a PR tour
for them here in southern California. All over: a big Los Angeles Times
story, television, you know? I mean, it was quite an event.
-
COLLINGS
- How did you get the television time?
-
WILSON
- I'm good at getting that.
-
COLLINGS
- Well, let's hear about that.
-
WILSON
- (laughter) Well, I know how to phrase a story that appeals to a
producer's ear as soon as he or she hears it. And I can couch it in
terms in which they immediately see visuals and see a story here, and a
conflict. So that's really the key to that.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. And you must've known people to contact as well. You had a lot of
good --
-
WILSON
- Not -- no, I wasn't into that yet. Later I did, yes. Later, I had a whole
book.
-
- And so we did that. And at the end of the tour -- this was one of -- I --
this was completely unexpected -- the secretary of the council talked to
me for about 20 minutes, and praised my efforts in ways that were so
simple and beautiful and unique, I was overcome. I'm still overcome
thinking about it. And they -- then they presented me with a ceremonial
blanket, and they said, "Your name will be spoken in kivas all over the
West." (laughter) Now, that was totally unexpected.
-
- Now, the big problem was, is that the secretary took the wrong route to
get there -- Paul Bernal, the secretary, who had once boasted that he
was going to die the richest Indian in America. Well, he should've been
alive today! You see, if the Pueblo had gone through George McGovern and
the Indian Affairs Committee, they would have gotten the title to those
lands. But that was too long a process, Bernal thought. So he went
through [President Richard M.] Nixon, and they got a 99-year lease on
the land. Now, I -- to me, that was a betrayal of the Pueblo. But they
all went for it. See, when the Indians go down in their kiva to vote on
something, they don't come out until everyone is agreed on the --
picture that at City Hall.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah, really.
-
WILSON
- And you see, at the time, the southwest artist Emil Bisttram, who started
the Taos Art School, was a friend of mine, because he was a disciple of
my guru also. And I would stay with him in Taos. He's a world-famous
artist, and I have some of his paintings. And I was introduced to
Trinidad, who was a dancer who my guru healed his heel so he could dance
again. And they were all very praiseworthy of my teacher there, and I
got to go back for victory day.
-
- Now, this is kind of a long-about story, but my -- there is a peace
banner that was approved by the United States in 1935. It's called the
Roerich Banner of Peace. Nicholas Roerich, who was my guru's guru,
introduced it to Henry Wallace, who introduced it to Roosevelt, and it
was passed on April 16th, 1935, and signed by Roosevelt and all 21 South
American countries. Mexico still flies it, Sweden flies it, Indian flies
it. There are stamps from all over the world that -- it was called "the
Red Cross of Culture" because it was designed to protect museums, and
scientific missions, and all cultural institutions in times of war. Of
course, with the advent of the atomic bomb, you couldn't be selective,
so it died. But Roosevelt himself said the underlying premise of this
text is deeper than the text itself. And there is a -- there is this
thing of recognizing other civilizations' contributions to culture, and
through that recognition become more culturally sensitive to another
country. Because every country has made contributions.
-
- So I had one of these banners, you see. And I went to the victory day
celebration in 1970, and of course Nixon gave them a cane, which was a
symbol of authority of their pueblo, because they had a cane from
Abraham Lincoln, and it was hanging up on a wall, and I hated to see
that. But when I got there, they had this bandstand like, and Nixon and
[Vice President Spiro T.] Agnew's picture were on there. And they were
honoring Kim Agnew, who was there with Leonard Garment, an advisor to
Nixon, for the presentation, giving her a headdress and everything. And
when the governor saw me arrive, he went down to the kiva and got this
banner, and came out and just threw it over the bandstand -- half of it
over Nixon's face, and I thought, (laughter) "Success!" But that was
that.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. Would you like to take a break?
-
WILSON
- No, I'm fine. I'm fine. If you're fine.
-
COLLINGS
- No, I'm fine, too. Well, now, the --
-
WILSON
- I'm up to 1970 now.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. But didn't you skip over your involvement in the West Coast Vietnam
Moratorium Day?
-
WILSON
- Oh, OK. OK.
-
- Through the Kennedy Action Corps and through the worldwide movement and
everything, I got involved in the antiwar movement. And I became a
member of the steering committee, which put on the big program at USC in
1969. Dr. [Ralph] Abernathy came out to speak, and he gave a light-AM
speech and everything. And I was an advisor to that movement for
strategy and tactics, and that's about what it comes down to. We also
did the march down Wilshire Boulevard in 1969 or '70, in which people
carried the banner. (laughter) The Banner of Peace.
-
COLLINGS
- The banner --
-
WILSON
- The Roerich Banner. The Roerich Banner of Peace and Culture. So...
-
COLLINGS
- So how did you get involved in that movement? Were there -- I mean, you
joined a committee, or what were the --
-
WILSON
- No, I was --
-
COLLINGS
- -- sort of the steps in that?
-
WILSON
- -- invited by the students to join because of my role in Watts. And I was
invited by the students to join.
-
COLLINGS
- The USC students?
-
WILSON
- Yeah, the USC students. I guess they liked the fact that I was doing -- I
was an adult, and I was doing something --
-
COLLINGS
- You were over 30, but you could be trusted.
-
WILSON
- Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And the Daily Trojan put out a booklet which had all
-- you know, a lot of people came down, and they took pictures and wrote
a story about it and everything, and about USC's involvement in Civil
Rights. And that was very nice. So I guess I became a person the people
saw as real in their eyes. You see, in the eyes of my peers, I wasn't
too real! (laughter) But I didn't care.
-
COLLINGS
- Your peers being who at this point?
-
WILSON
- People in the advertising business. Yeah. Because they're all focused on
money, you know? Except the creative people. They have -- they --
creative people always have a different slant on things -- mostly.
-
COLLINGS
- You were still in advertising at this point?
-
WILSON
- I was still in advertising. And it was around then, too, that I started
in what turned out to be a long history of doing editorial rebuttals on
the local stations. I did several. So many. Then in 1972, [George]
McGovern was running against Nixon, and I became the principal speaker
of the McGovern campaign out of southern California. And because I was
working freelance, I could go to colleges. Oh, I had such a -- I could
go anywhere. There's Beverly Hills -- Jack Palance's wife [Virginia
Palance] organized a big thing, you know? (laughter) And I got over, and
I worked up a fiery speech against Nixon, and -- because we all hated
Nixon. And when he finally resigned, I felt as if a friend
had...(laughter) left me, you know? Because I was so involved with that
for so long.
-
COLLINGS
- So you were speaking at campaign rallies --
-
WILSON
- I was --
-
COLLINGS
- -- for McGovern?
-
WILSON
- Yes, but I also became a spokesman for the antiwar movement. I would go
around and debate Marines on campus against the war. So I was doing both
of these things, but they were both tightly entwined, because everybody
who was against the war was against Nixon. All the military who was for
the war was for Nixon. So it became pretty testy, you know, and people
wanted to get -- some people wanted to get violent. You see, the thing
is -- and this especially happened at UCLA: in the antiwar movement,
there were agent provocateurs placed there by the FBI [Federal Bureau of
Investigation] who got people to do violent things so they could be
arrested and look bad, you know? I mean, the things you learn. I mean,
how can...
-
COLLINGS
- So how did you learn about that?
-
WILSON
- Well, we lived it. We lived it. We uncovered them. You see, this comes
later, but I was one of 108 people in 1984 -- 108 activists in Los
Angeles -- who sued Darryl Gates and the Los Angeles Police Department
for illegal surveillance -- and won. We won $1.3 million, and my share
was $7,500. And $2,500 of that came from an FBI -- a local police
television crew filming us when we did -- had -- did our CAUSE [Campaign
Against Utility Service Exploitation] stuff. And none of us had ever
been arrested; none of us was -- you know, we were all clean. (laughter)
And we were doing our -- what we consider our patriotic duty. And you
read -- when people write books and when people give speeches,
especially about Constitutional issues, they say, "So and such has a
chilling effect," you know? And I never knew what that meant until I
read my own file. And it sends chills up and down your spine to think
you're trying to be a good citizen, and the police is keeping files on
you. I mean...
-
- But also a that time, you see, I was the head of the Democratic
Socialists of America in Los Angeles. But that's much later. I'm getting
ahead of myself. And --
-
COLLINGS
- OK. All right. No, don't get ahead of yourself.
-
WILSON
- -- that was a no-no, too.
-
- So -- the government. We lost, but several of us have stayed together all
of these years. In fact, we got together a basketball team. And when I
was in high school -- I didn't play sports in college, but in high
school, I -- football, basketball, and track. So we got together a
basketball team, and played in the city league, and that was a lot of
fun.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah, that does sound fun.
-
WILSON
- So after the McGovern campaign, a woman who had worked with me in Watts,
Claire Pershing, she called me up one day, and she says, "Burt, I'm down
in Indio, and I'm working out of the UFW office here, and we're having
problems with Teamsters beating up farm workers in the field. Would you
come down and help?" I said sure. So this was before the grape strike of
1973. So again, I'm working freelance, and at this time, actually, I was
doing the advertising for Self-Realization Fellowship. Because they were
on my radio show once at KMET, and they found out I was in the
advertising business, and they said, "You're the only one that we of --
we know who knows what we do who's in the advertising business.
(laughter) I said, "I'll be glad to help you." So I did their
advertising for seven years.
-
- So I went down to Indio -- Coachella, actually, Coachella -- and I worked
there from Thursday through Sunday. And when you first get down there --
I didn't know this at the time, but they put you to a test, in which
they run you all day without lunch to see if you're going to complain or
-- you know? And --
-
COLLINGS
- That's interesting.
-
WILSON
- Yeah, it is. That's how they test people to see their commitment.
-
COLLINGS
- How do they know if they had, you know, like a big breakfast? (laughter)
-
WILSON
- (laughter) I didn't know that, either, but I mean... You know, I think I
began to realize what was happening later, when he refused a request for
lunch and everything, you know? And it -- but I did get to visit farm
workers out in the field, especially the Filipinos, which is a wonderful
culture. I mean, there were no women there, but I mean, they had these
huge woks where they did their squid, they ate communally, they lived
communally. They had chickens outside they used for cockfights because
that's part of the culture, and every day they went out and twisted
vines around wires.
-
- And so anyway, the problem was that the Teamsters were beating up farm
workers in the field. So the first thing I did was organize a news
conference, and I got all the media from Palm Springs and everything to
show up. And there were --
-
COLLINGS
- How did you get them to all show up?
-
WILSON
- I called them up. Because farm workers were news then. The farm
workers/Teamster battle was news. And I called them up. And we did a
news conference, and what my goal was -- and it worked really well --
was to position the Teamsters as the bad guys, the farm workers as the
good guys in a way that if the Teamsters tried anything from then on,
they would further increase their position as the bad guys.
-
COLLINGS
- So how did you achieve that positioning?
-
WILSON
- By articulating the conflict. And you see, farm works are simple people
with great hearts. And you just listen to them talk simply, without any
guile, and without any trying to get something or do something, and you
see there's no defense for that. (laughter) So, and they're convincing,
as they should be. So we were able to do that to project that onto the
media. And it worked, and it worked well.
-
WILSON
- In the meantime, I was living in a trailer which was cockroach infected;
you'd get up at 1 o'clock, and the floor was --
-
COLLINGS
- Oh, god!
-
WILSON
- -- covered with cockroaches.
-
COLLINGS
- I hate that.
-
WILSON
- Oh, it was terrible. And everybody was proud of the fact that they were
earning $5 a week. And I went to Ray Huerta's house many times. His
sister was Dolores Huerta, César's [Cesar Chavez] aide. And you know,
he's putting two girls through Berkeley on $5 a week. Sure you are, Ray.
(laughter) You know? But that's all right. And Ray used to get drunk and
come and terrorize the women in the trailer. So it was nice that I was
there (laughter) at the time.
-
COLLINGS
- Now, you met César Chávez? Is that correct?
-
WILSON
- Well, I never met him, actually, but this is a very interesting story.
Let me tell you what happened. I was -- I took Spanish in junior high
school, so I knew a little Spanish, and I learned more, and I was
actually writing press releases in Spanish. (laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- Really?
-
WILSON
- Yeah, and going around and visiting Spanish language radio stations,
which were just a cement block house with a 45 RPM player, which they
used for a turntable. And so one day, Ray Huerta calls me, and I'm just
lapping up what's going on: the fact that even though the farm workers
there -- the farm workers were still acting like the old coyotes, which
were the labor organizers and so forth. And there were several people in
the movement that really wanted -- we went to a Safeway store one night,
and the guy gave us bicycle chains. "We hear the Teamsters are coming.
There might be a fight." Now, last thing I wanted to do (laughter) was
get in a fight, but I mean, there were people there spoiling for a
fight, you know? And you learn after a while that you are dealing with a
spectrum -- the whole spectrum of human life in a movement, you see?
-
- So Ray Huerta calls me in, and he says, "César wants you to stop."
-
COLLINGS
- Stop the publicity?
-
WILSON
- Yes. And I said, "Why?" He says, "You're doing too good a job." Well,
here's the thing. You know -- and this was confirmed later by a friend
of mine who was in CAUSE, Peter Christiansen, who was the minister of
the First Unitarian Church on 4th and something in L.A -- because he --
the people who were helping César, raising money and so forth, I mean,
they were just cutthroats. And they were just shameless, but they raised
money. Well, here's the thing: the reason César wanted me to stop was
because the farm workers were getting too good of a name. And he was
going to go out on strike, because the minute he went out on strike --
you see, if César could've won the battle in Coachella and got the
contract away from the Teamsters, he could have won all the way up the
valley, because the farm -- the -- I've visited farmers and the growers,
you know, and they said that they would hire [United Farm Workers] farm
workers over the Teamsters. He could've won the whole state all the way
up the valley. But no -- he chose to go on strike, because he
immediately got $688,000 from the AFL-CIO So it was a money deal, you
see, and he thought he could advance his -- this would finance a program
of conflict against the -- you see? So I was very conflicted about --
-
COLLINGS
- So he wanted to go for the larger struggle?
-
WILSON
- Well, he wanted the money to finance what he believed was a conflict
which could attract followers. With no conflict, he could've won, but
with conflict, he could go to people and say, " I need money for the
conflict, you see? And so I lost a lot of respect for César. You
couldn't say it on the streets at the time, and the Unitarian minister,
Peter Christiansen, is still a friend of mine. He said at the time, he
says, "You can't go around talking about this, Burt, because everybody
loves César Chávez. And I'm not saying that that was César himself,
because he later wrote me a nice letter, Because I think Ray told them
that I was really pissed off, that he called me off for doing a good job
(laughter) in a cause that they wanted -- that they asked me to do.
-
COLLINGS
- So you had been continuing to get the news to cover --
-
WILSON
- Yes.
-
WILSON
- -- the struggle between the Teamsters and the farm workers?
-
WILSON
- Yes. And we were winning, you see.
-
COLLINGS
- And they were covering it sort of almost on a nightly basis?
-
WILSON
- Yes, yes. And we were winning, and I was on talk shows, you know? And we
were winning, and he called us off because he wanted conflict, and I was
neutralizing the conflict. And so that was 1973. (laughter) The grapes
dried, Now --
-
COLLINGS
- OK. Excuse -- you've been going for --
-
WILSON
- 65 minutes.
-
COLLINGS
- -- an -- 65 minutes."
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. Would you like to take a break before getting into CAUSE?
-
WILSON
- Well, I'm OK if you're OK.
-
COLLINGS
- OK. All right. I just don't like to wear out my interviewees.
-
WILSON
- No, I wouldn't --
-
COLLINGS
- That's why I'm asking you.
-
WILSON
- When I'm on a roll, I want to... (laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- All right. OK, good. OK. So now -- yeah.
-
WILSON
- Now, several -- six of us who were disciples of my guru, Ralph Houston,
moved into a big house together. So we had a community. It was written
up in the L.A. Times by Ellen Stern Harris. And we were living for $170
a month -- rent, food, and utilities.
-
COLLINGS
- OK. And what was the basis of this community?
-
WILSON
- The basis was they were all working in Watts with me, so we had that in
common, and we were all followers of the same guru. And we had that in
common.
-
- So -- and plus, when you live in common like that, it's a great training
ground for personal relationships. Because you have to have rules about
cleanliness and sex; otherwise, you can fall apart. And most --
-
COLLINGS
- Can I pause this for a moment?
-
WILSON
- Yeah. Most communes that you think of in the Sixties fell apart because
of -- there was no cohesiveness, and they either fall apart over people
sleeping with each other -- and so I -- we said, "No problem. Jus t go
outside. (laughter) Or just go somewhere else." Or cleanliness. So we
had rules, which were very simple. And I cooked three nights a week for
six people, and that was wonderful I love to cook.
-
- So about this time, I was still doing freelance commercials for AIP. That
was my --
-
COLLINGS
- "AIP" being...?
-
WILSON
- "American International Pictures."
-
COLLINGS
- (phone ringing throughout) I'm sorry about that.
-
WILSON
- (laughter) That's OK.
-
- In 1974, I think it was, I got a -- I got my own television show [The
C.I.A. (Citizens Intelligence Agency)] on channel 63, which was an
alternative PBS [Public Broadcasting Service] station at the time -- a
huge --
-
COLLINGS
- I've got some pictures of that --
-
WILSON
- -- experience, yeah.
-
COLLINGS
- -- that you sent me. Yeah.
-
WILSON
- Yeah. Yeah. It was a huge experience, because it was like a movement
station, (laughter) you know? And my show was called "The CIA." I had
formed this -- formed the Citizens Intelligence Association. --
-
COLLINGS
- Oh, very good.
-
WILSON
- -- and I called it the CIA. And I started out --
-
COLLINGS
- (phone rings) You know what? I have got -- OK. All right. There we go. So
you had formed a group called the...?
-
WILSON
- The Citizens Intelligence Association. And I put out a newsletter. I
might have had one somewheres --
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah, I think you had that.
-
WILSON
- -- in these articles. And the first thing I did was take on Chief Davis,
at the time, for gay bashing. Now, I'm not gay, but I really didn't like
policemen going around beating up gay people. So I put the issue on the
air, and it came to be a big thing because it made -- it publicized what
was going on. And once you get into the light of the public, it's hard
to continually doing it without -- so it eventually led to
communications between the gay community and so forth and the police,
and that sort of thing stopped. And so then I was -- every time there
was a gay event, I was invited -- their candlelight march down Hollywood
Boulevard, and things like that.
-
- And about this time, CAUSE started. And I went to them, and I offered to
put the issue on my television program. And Peter Christiansen was my
co-host. And we had -- now, you'll find it in magazines, but I had a
beautiful horse statue -- it was about a foot high -- that I had won in
a state fair in 1952 or something like that. And what I did was I sawed
the front end of the horse off, so just the back end of the horse was
mounted, you see. And we gave -- we -- that was the Earl Butz Award.
(laughter) People of course called it the Horse's Ass Award, which is
awarded each week, you know?
-
- But the program -- and the program, I guess if I have a particular
talent, it's that I can delve into issues, and I can articulate both
sides in a way that I can simplify issues for people to make them
understand, even if I have to draw diagrams and stuff like that. So I
got involved with CAUSE, and we started putting this stuff on the air.
Now, along the way, CAUSE was -- Tim Brick was one of the founders of
CAUSE, along with Larry Gross. And this movement had spanned from
Communists to labor unions to senior citizens' organizations. And we
began meeting about this.
-
- Now, the issue was that ARCO went to the -- ARCO told everybody -- and
kept telling people -- that we would be out of energy by 1995. And
Southern Ga- they went to the Southern California Gas Company, and they
said this was called an advanced payments deal: "We want you to bill
your ratepayers in advance for all -- for millions of dollars, $660
million -- which we will use not for oil, not for natural gas, but to
secure first bidding rights on this." And the Chase Manhattan Bank was
managing the whole deal, and of course, at that time, ARCO, every-
anything with a red, white, and blue and a logo was a Rockefeller. And
of course, it was a whole Rockefeller money-grabbing operation. And we
citizens were supposed to pay for it, an advance payments. And the PUC
[Public Utilities Commission] approved it! (laughter) Or they were in
the process of approving it. They were for it. And this was a Jerry
Brown deal. Now, Jerry Brown I consider to be the worst governor that
California ever had, because he gave a liberal face to the community but
never did anything. As Tim used to say, he manipulated symbols, and
that's all he did.
-
- So I thought, my god, this is wrong! (laughter) This is really, really
wrong! It's taken money from -- where does it say in free enterprise
that you can have people give money additionally to their gas bill in
order to give an oil company bidding rights on Alaskan oil in Prudhoe
Bay? And the PUC wants to approve it, and Jerry Brown is for it -- come
on!
-
- Well, by that time, I had worked somewhat also with Ed Koupal of People's
Lobby, who I found to be a very interesting person. And I made use of
their printing press a lot.
-
COLLINGS
- So it's interesting that this particular issue seemed to galvanize people
from so many different organizations.
-
WILSON
- Because it was out of their pocket. You see? It was out of their pocket.
And it was VISIBLY out of their pocket. You see, my proudest possession
of all of this is that little refund certificate that says you're going
to get -- you see? We were responsible for that. But I'm getting ahead
of myself.
-
- So one day at CAUSE, we got together all of these organizations, and...
So we had -- we felt we had to have leadership. So we had an election in
our office over on Pico [Blvd.], which was in this -- People for
Economic Justice or something like that.
-
COLLINGS
- Pico and what?
-
WILSON
- Pico and Sepulveda [Blvd.]. (laughter) I don't know. I don't know. It was
around there. Fifty -- the address is on some of this stuff. It's...I
don't know.
-
COLLINGS
- All right, all right. I'm just wondering where it was. OK.
-
WILSON
- Yeah. And Tim Brick and I were elected co-coordinators. We both got the
same amount of votes. Now, this was a -- this...I -- Tim Brick is the
most wonderful person I've ever worked with. And we worked
hand-in-glove. Also, the idea of having co-coordinators in a movement
that spanned 29 different organizations, that meant -- because everybody
secretly wants to be leader, and wants to be on television, and wants to
be the hero, you see? And that means they couldn't shoot down -- they
had to shoot down both of us, so nobody ever tried. So it was hard
enough to manage 29 different interests.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah, and how did you do that?
-
WILSON
- And -- by being inclusive. We were inclusive, and we -- you know, and for
me, who was used to doing everything by myself up until that time, and
Tim lived in a community house, too, in Pasadena, you see. And Tim was
extremely -- Tim was an Irishman that had a gift of gab, and he was
extremely good in articulating the issues, and also dissecting issues
and making them plain to people and talking about them. So we had a
steering committee which really knew how to operate.
-
- So what -- the first thing I did is we explained the issue on television.
-
COLLINGS
- On your show?
-
WILSON
- On my show, right.
-
COLLINGS
- Which was the Citizen Intelligence --
-
WILSON
- Yeah.
-
COLLINGS
- -- at that point? OK.
-
WILSON
- Incidentally, Peter Christiansen tells the story, but I went to a police
meeting one time by City Hall there at whatever the place is now -- I
can't remember the name -- the glass city. And it was something about
police brutality or something to this -- and I was scheduled to speak,
and there must have been a couple of thousand people in the audience.
And I came up to the microphone, and I said, "My name is Burt Wilson.
I'm with the CIA." (laughter) And then I paused dramatically and said,
"The Citizens' Intelligence Association." And the place broke up! It --
(laughter) just, laughter rolled throughout everybody. That was a
wonderful feeling.
-
- But anyway, what I did was -- I think my biggest contribution was I
decentralized the organizing process. Because I got -- we printed up --
over at People's Lobby Press, we printed up -- there were four 8 1/2 x
11 sections you could run off, and then fold over until you had
something on the front and something on the back. So we printed -- I
wish I had one -- we printed the nature of the problem, the solutions,
the lies they were telling, what you can do about it, and we had little
scissor marks. And so we said, "Write in for this. We will send it to
you. You cut it apart, xerox it in your local -- and distribute it in
your own neighborhood," you see? So this was an entirely new way of
thinking: using television as an organizing tool, you see? And it
worked. (laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- Now, just as an aside, do you have any idea what the ratings were for
that show?
-
WILSON
- No, but -- I don't know if it's in here, but it was reviewed by John
Barber one night on Channel 4, and he gave us an excellent review. But
we do know -- you see, the other part of that is through our own
newsletters and our own organizations, we told people to watch the show,
you see? So it was a --
-
WILSON
- So you had a lot of word of mouth going?
-
WILSON
- It was a bi-level marketing. We had a marketing, and a listening thing
going on at the same time.
-
- And one of the funniest things was at a meeting one day -- you see, we
had some people who were old Jewish Reds. Now, if there's one class of
people in the world ever that I love, it's old Jewish Reds. And they all
lived together at the First Unitarian Church, Peter Christiansen's
church, in a placed called Sunset House, which was a senior living -- I
used to go and talk to them about, you know, the IWW [International
Workers of the World] and the things in New York that happened and
everything. I mean, and these were people who put it out there, you
know? And oh god, what an inspiration they were to me!
-
- And the funny thing is while we were doing this electronic organizing, we
had one woman who came to our organizational meetings weekly and would
stand up and say, "Vat ve need is shtreetcorner distribution!"
(laughter) And that became like a codeword between Tim and I. Whenever
we'd see each other, we'd say, "Vat ve need -- streetcorner
distribution!" Here we were using the most modern way to organize.
-
- So then I came up with the idea -- I need to characterize the issue, and
I thought, well, we call people who rip people off for money financial
-- in the financial industry "loan sharks." So we'll call this "oil
sharking." And Jaws was the big movie at the time, and so I got the idea
of making up a papier-mâché shark. So Howie Stover, who become our
representative on the Department of Water and Power rate committee --
Howie was an MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] genius. He
could do anything. And Howie built the shark with moveable jaws,
(laughter) you see? And we called it Rippy, the ARCO Shark, ripping off
more money -- you know? It was -- I mean --
-
COLLINGS
- Boy, that's -- that was a good one.
-
WILSON
- And we built this 12-foot shark, and you saw pictures of it in there. And
to cut to one part of the chase right away, I was debating the ARCO
people one night, and they called up the television station and said,
"If he brings that goddamn shark, we're not coming!" (laughter)
-
- So then, I wrote a guerilla theater skit called "Out of the Jaws of the
ARCO Shark." Now, we put this on at high noon out in the patio in front
of the ARCO building.
-
COLLINGS
- Downtown?
-
WILSON
- Downtown. And what it was, we had a rope stretched across with little
waves on it, you see, and the female consumer was adrift in the sea of
economic disaster, you see, trying to make it toward shore. And she's
almost made it, and then the shark comes in! (laughter) And bites her
for more money and so forth. And while this is going on, there's a guy
standing -- and all the ARCO executives were out there, you know, with
their arms folded, (laughter) looking at this like --
-
COLLINGS
- But the other people are all office workers --
-
WILSON
- They were all there!
-
COLLINGS
- -- working downtown. It's not --
-
WILSON
- And the media! The media loved it. It was all over the papers and the
media. And -- you see, because visual, you had to be visual. And nobody
in the consumer movement before, to my knowledge, had ever had this
sense of doing things precisely with the media aspect, you see? It was
usually streetcorner distribution, you know? And so -- and then a guy
out in the audience stripped off his clothes; he had a Superman -- he
says, "I'll save you!" You know? And he's a consumer and CAUSE, and he
runs out and saves her. Oh, it was fantastic. It was just fantastic.
-
- And then I think that there were two PUC [Public Utilities Commission]
commissioners: Batinovic and Ross. And these guys were Jerry Brown
liberals, who -- Robert Kennedy hated liberals, and I sure began to
understand why: because all they do is talk. And they were for the ARCO
Southern California Gas deal, because the numbers are there; we're going
to run out -- you know? And they were articulating the whole gas company
program. So the first thing I did was -- I wasn't an attorney, but I
went down and I read -- I went down to the library and got all the law
books on Public Utilities Commission law. And I looked through there and
everything, and I found that anybody with 20 -- who could get 25
signatures could fine a complaint against the -- against a public
utility, see? So I drafted up a complaint citing previous decisions, you
know, in Public Util- because we all went back to Hiram Johnson (sp?),
you know, who said, "We must control the utilities, or the utilities
will control us." And that was our warcry, you see? And of course, who
loves the utilities, you see?
-
- So that was -- we had a natural audience that all we had to do was get
them excited about money being taken from them illegally. It was an
illegal deal from the word "go." They would've got away with it if it
wasn't for CAUSE.
-
COLLINGS
- And was there any concern about the environmental impact in Alaska?
-
WILSON
- This -- of course. Not only there, but this came -- and I'm getting a
little ahead of myself -- this came slightly later, but it overlapped in
the LNG [liquified natural gas], them wanting to bring LNG into
California, which is still going on today, you see. They wanted to bring
it in at Point Concepcion first, which has the strongest tides,
riptides; it's the worst place to bring something like that in. They
wanted to bring it into L.A. harbor. They wanted to bring it in -- you
know, to public places. But that -- I'm getting ahead of myself with
that.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah, yeah. We'll get to that later.
-
WILSON
- So we started filing complaints against the utilities for this and that
and the other thing. And when a complaint is filed, you have to have a
hearing. (laughter) And we just had one hearing going on (laughter)
after another, you see. And we really got a lot of people excited about
this. But then it came down to -- and we were doing stuff all the time.
-
COLLINGS
- Well, you were --
-
WILSON
- We were on the media constantly. Constantly. I was -- either myself or
Tim, or both of us, constantly. And about that, by the way -- and I
think this was -- this helped: I always insisted on dressing like a
straight guy in a sport coat and tie. Everybody else looked like a
longhaired radical hippie, you know? But I thought I could communicate
better with people if they didn't -- if they weren't disturbed by my
look so much. So I always projected a clean-cut image, as if I were one
of the people, you know? And then I could reach right wingers, too,
because you see, they hated the utilities almost as much as we did
unless they had stock, you see? (laughter)
-
- And one of the things I just remembered now was that I found out that I
could control an interview. Tim could control an interview, too. And I
found out the techniques of controlling an interview. So I never worried
about going in to interview. I always felt confident. And the media
began to compliment me when I would put out the whole issue in 30
seconds, which they could then show on the news. And Warren Olney gave
me a special spot on the -- on an interview on Channel 4, because Warren
Olney was a Socialist, too. And I'm not a Socialist, by the way, but
that's another story.
-
- So the only interviewer I couldn't control was George Putnam. I was on
the late news one night, and it was -- this was about a phone company
issue, which was much, much later, but I started in trying to control
the interview, and all of a sudden he just swept me up! It's like an
aura came out from him and engulfed me, and all I could do was respond
to what he said. It was absolutely ethereal, the thing that was going
on. And I couldn't -- he's the only one I couldn't -- where I couldn't
control the interview.
-
COLLINGS
- So you would usually control it by -- sort of the way that the
politicians do, where every question, you kind of go back to your issue?
-
WILSON
- To my issue, exactly. That's controlling the interview. But then it was
unheard of in consumer groups. And the other thing that we had going for
us: you see, it wasn't until we started against the phone company --
because you see, we're not only fighting the utilities, and the banks,
and everything else -- we're fighting the California Business
Roundtable. Which is the biggest underground organization in California.
And when we started -- when we exposed the phone company giving out
unlisted numbers to people without a warrant -- you know, to the
library; anybody could get your unlisted number.
-
COLLINGS
- And they were charging you for --
-
WILSON
- Charging you 15 cents. You -- we stopped that. And we had a news
conference out in front of the phone company, and we said, "Go up on the
fifth floor -- that's where all this is happening -- and talk to them."
Well, they went up there, and they talked to the engineers. And
engineers are honest, you see, and they said, "Oh, yeah -- we've been
doing that." (laughter)
-
- Well, within a week, the phone company had a public relations specialist
by the name of Doug Cameron. And he was specifically detailed to counter
me wherever I went, you see? And he is in this picture.
-
COLLINGS
- Oh, OK. I was going to ask you about that picture.
-
WILSON
- That's Doug Cameron next to Ciji [Ware, Channel 28 TV host] --
-
COLLINGS
- This is -- and this is a Channel 28 debate?
-
WILSON
- Channel 28, yeah.
-
COLLINGS
- KUXE?
-
WILSON
- That's Doug Cameron right there. And this is a PUC guy who didn't have
anything to say.
-
COLLINGS
- And who is this?
-
WILSON
- Cigi Ware. Ciji Ware -- that was -- C-I-J-I. That was the woman.
-
COLLINGS
- And what was -- was she from the...?
-
WILSON
- It was a Channel 28 debate on the phone company issues, because everybody
hates the phone companies. We had all that going. But back to before.
-
- Then I read the back of the gas bill. And you'll find that it's changed
since then. They changed it soon after. It says, "If you disagree with
your bill" -- and it didn't qualify what your disagreement was -- "send
it along with a check to the PUC, and they will investigate your
grievance." So I got together with Tim and the other people, and I said,
"Let's go ask people to withhold their payment on their gas bills by
sending them to the PUC instead."
-
COLLINGS
- Right, right. And this was the boycott, then?
-
WILSON
- This was the boycott, right. Well, one of the most interesting things
about that is before, when we were speaking, there were several seniors
who just wanted to get on television so badly -- Ed Novakov (sp?) and
Herman Mulmann (sp?), they were longhaired radicals who just wanted to
rant, you know? And they would show up at everything we did. Everybody
deserted Tim and I when it came to this one (laughter) because we were
asking people to withhold their gas bills, and a lot of people thought
that that -- if it didn't work, it could be our demise.
-
- So we called a news conference at the Press Club, and we showed them what
to do, withhold the gas bills. And the next week, they started coming
in. Pretty soon, thousands of people -- and we went into the PUC office,
and they had a special basket (laughter) for the CAUSE people who were
withholding their gas bills. And shortly after that, the deal was called
off. And you see, Batinovic and Ross, who would scream because we'd show
up at the same liberal meetings, you know, and Batinovic would shout
across the room, "You guys better not get in a pissing contest with us!"
And Batinovic owned all the xerox machines in the post offices
throughout California, you know, and he was a big liberal Democrat.
-
- So then we won, and in the stories -- the Times finally printed a story
about CAUSE's participation, but you wouldn't think that CAUSE
participated at all. All of a sudden, Batinovic and Ross were supporting
the decision to stop the ARCO Southern California (laughter) Gas deal,
and so forth. And so we secured a $1 billion consumer victory. It was
the largest in California, Erin Brockovich be damned. And some people
said that it amounted really to a $3 billion win because these same
kinds of deals were being orchestrated in other states throughout the
United States -- about six or seven other states, you see? And so it was
a huge victory. It was a huge victory. And we -- I feel like I just
experienced a victory myself, you know?
-
- And for a long time after that, we didn't know what to do, and there
became -- and after this I'll stop -- there became a debate within the
group. Well, first, the L.A. Times printed a story on us. They wanted to
show how we were just a paper tiger who won -- and in effect we were,
you know, because there's always four or five people who do the work,
and everybody else loves to wave the flag. But all the people who we
represented -- and I'm right before the LNG deal now -- all the people
who we represented, the leaders of organizations, they said good things
about us. And I don't have a copy of the Times story, but none of the
other -- the Times especially -- and the Herald-Examiner was part of
that -- and officially, CAUSE never existed when it came to the victory.
It was not a -- you know, because we had beat -- (laughter) in our own
naive way, we had beat the powers of California! Oil, gas, city, state
-- I mean, we won! The PUC. It was unheard of. I still can't believe it
today! (laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- I know! I still can't believe it, either! (laughter)
-
WILSON
- But I mean, I think it has to go down as one of the most unusual fights,
and one of the most unusual victories you'll ever find by consumer
organizations. Usually, maybe it's one consumer organization which is a
single-issue organization, but ours was a multi-issue.
-
- And there -- and then we came into the thing: what should we do with
CAUSE? Well, let's incorporate it, and we'll go out and be like Sylvia
Segal and -- with TURN [Toward Utility Rate Normalization]. She founded
Toward Utility Rate Normalization, which was an allied group with ours.
She worked out of San Francisco, but she was totally money-oriented --
but she did good, too. But you see, I'm not -- neither Tim nor I were
the types who could go out and ask people for money. I'm not that type.
I don't know how to. And my reasoning was that consumer organizations or
organizations which fight city hall should be ad hoc and organize for a
specific purpose, and then de-organize until the next issue comes along.
But we stayed organized, and as it turned out --
-
COLLINGS
- And how did you stay organized? Through holding regular meetings, or
what?
-
WILSON
- Yeah, yeah -- holding regular meetings. And by that time, we were the
superheroes of the movement, and everybody thought that we could beat
anybody -- and WE thought we could (laughter) beat anybody! And people
would bring the issues to us. I mean, eventually -- and I'll get into
that later -- people from within the gas company and the phone companies
were sending us internal memos, (laughter) you see, which we could
exploit. And -- because I'm telling you, most everybody hated the
utilities.
-
- Now, the most interesting thing to me was after the issue was dead, A.
Donald Anderson, who headed the PR group for ARCO, asked me to what he
called "an economy lunch," you see? Because he thought, you know, I
wouldn't go to the Jonathan Club with him or something -- and I wouldn't
have, you know? (laughter) But he -- we went to some salad bar
somewheres, and we sat down and we talked. And then he offered me a job
at ARCO. Forty grand a year, which was a lot of money in 1973. And I was
to head up ARCO's campaign to get a rapid transit in L.A., one; number
two, to get a stop right under the ARCO building. See? And with me
heading that campaign, you see, I would -- they would use my integrity
which I had established in Los Angeles to have their own way. I turned
him down, of course. (laughter)
-
- But it was interesting, you see? Because first, they'd try to buy you
off, and then they'd offer you a job. And that's the way they co-opt
people, you see? They think they -- they really think that anybody can
be bought. But I know for a fact that -- I know Tim couldn't be bought,
and I couldn't be bought, and there are several people who couldn't be
bought. But what an education in relationships there is in a movement
when you're dealing with all these diverse personalities.
-
COLLINGS
- And the range was from senior citizens' groups all the way to -- what
would you say was the --
-
WILSON
- Communists. Communist front organizations, you know? And like that. So --
-
COLLINGS
- And one representative from each of these groups would come to a regular
weekly meeting? Is that --
-
WILSON
- Yes.
-
COLLINGS
- -- how it would work?
-
WILSON
- Yes. That was the idea. And then they would watch my television program.
-
- Now, the television program, the television channel was run by Leslie
Parrish, a movie star. She played Daisy Mae in the Lil' Abner movie. And
Leslie was a good friend of mine. She's married now to Jonathon
Livingston Seagull author Richard Bach. But Leslie was a very emotional
person at this time. She was trying to run a television station. And she
was a good organizer, but I think that when challenged, she couldn't
react in a way -- she would react more in hostility than in a way --
like Peter Christiansen used to say, you attract more flies with honey
than you do with vinegar, you see? And there are a lot of people out to
get her, and she eventually lost the station. The station went dark, and
it never saw the light again. Now, that was not because of the programs
we were running on the station -- it was some other issue having to do
with an alternative PBS station. I mean, the facilities were crude. I
want to tell you, it was volunteers doing all the work. It was great --
the kind of thing I love, you know?
-
COLLINGS
- Oh, yeah. Like the cable -- the early --
-
WILSON
- Yeah.
-
COLLINGS
- -- cable stations?
-
WILSON
- And at the same time -- by then, too, I also had a -- I was on the radio
three times a week at KPFK doing an hour talk show. And of course KPFK
was the big liberal radio station, so you see, I had a lot of outreach.
And to this day, I would say that the use of the media was key to our
victory, and key to our -- to what we did next. Because everybody knew
us by that time, and...
-
- I got to tell you one story --
-
COLLINGS
- Oh, yeah, please.
-
WILSON
- while it's on my mind, OK? This was during the LNG [liquefied natural
gas] campaign -- liquid natural gas. And I was scheduled by ABC
[American Broadcasting Company] to debate former Senator [John V.]
Tunney, who was going to represent the Gas Company on the issue. And
Jerry Dunphy was going to do the interviewing, OK? So I got there early
and everything. Tunney breezed in, whipped off his coat, and he had this
big legal pad which I could see he just came from the Gas Company, or
they already gave him all the debate points on the thing.
-
- So we took our places, and the segment started, and Dunphy says to
Tunney, "Well, what do you think about this, Senator?" And (laughter)
Tunney goes into this explanation of LNG, you know, and what it means,
and everything like that. And he said, "And Mr. Wilson, what do you have
to say?" I said, "Well, the issue is easy if you remember the 'three
Ds': LNG is dumb, dangerous, and damned expensive." (laughter) And I saw
Tunney -- Dunphy's eyes just do circles, and he started going the
opposite directions. He was so angry (laughter) that I had taken the
whole issue away, you see, and completely deflated Tunney. And Tunney
never survived. And then it became the two Irishmen against the German,
you see? (laughter) And he was trying to support Tunney, and I was
coming back with these things. You know, it was almost like my words
were coming from somewheres else, but it was a wonderful debate.
(laughter) I wish I had a copy of it.
-
- But you see, that's what you had to do, because the people we were
fighting were of the "elite class," if you want to put it that way, and
they felt they had a natural right to issues. And they felt that because
of who they were that people would understand and believe everything
they said. But when they came on something that shot back and undermined
their position in simple words that created conflict, BOOM! Well...
-
COLLINGS
- And as you said before, came back dressed as they were dressed, and --
-
WILSON
- Yes, yes.
-
COLLINGS
- -- speaking their language?
-
WILSON
- Yes. And this was the thing: both Tim and I were able to take any debate
down ten levels, whereas the average person we talked to could go to
maybe three. So we could bring up stuff that they didn't even know. But
after that particular debate, I sat down and tried to gather myself, and
Dr. George [the KABC weatherman] comes over and he says, "Isn't there
some way we can do this without acrimony?" And I looked at George, and I
said, "NO." (laughter) You know? Because another thing you have to be
careful is because people get uncomfortable with open conflict. And --
but that was our whole strategy, was open conflict. But what we had
going for us was the truth, and that counts a lot, I think. A whole lot.
-
COLLINGS
- Well, and also it was a period when there was a sort of an entry point
for attacking these --
-
WILSON
- Oh, yeah.
-
COLLINGS
- -- quote/unquote, "establishment..."
-
WILSON
- Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. People were on our side more than they were on
Tunney's side. Look at Tunney: he was a defeated one-term Senator. So...
-
COLLINGS
- So your tactics were the boycott, as you described it, the --
-
WILSON
- That was a biggee.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. The guerilla theater?
-
WILSON
- But first, you see, here's the thing: there's an old saying in the
ancient wisdom that you can not defeat evil in disguise -- you have to
unmask it first. So our task was to unmask for the people the evil of
the money-grabbing, you see? And that's what we were able to do. That
played a big part in the tactics, because by the time we got through
doing graphs with circles and arrows, people understood the complexity
of the issues and what was being put over on them in the guise of -- you
know, there's a phrase that came out of Eisenhower administration:
"enlightened self-interest." And ever since then, politicians have been
couching private gain under the auspices of "public good." It still
happens today. It happens everywhere. And this was another one of those
instances, you know? So...
-
COLLINGS
- So you had rallies; you had -- for the -- this was --
-
WILSON
- Oh, yeah. We had teach-ins, just like the antiwar movement. And this is
where Tim really excelled. Tim -- and we were kind of like a one-two
punch, and because of my involvement with the gay community, the gay
newspapers and everything supported us like crazy, with big editorials
and everything. And some of the local shopping newses would take up our
cause. But by and large, we would go around and speak everywhere: little
senior citizen lunches -- anywhere. And the thing was that we were both
available to do that. So we could articulate the issues, and...I'm
getting ahead of myself, but... Well, I'll wait for that when we get
into --
-
- [BREAK IN AUDIO] [END OF AUDIO FILE]
1.2. Session 2A ( December 5, 2005)
-
COLLINGS
- I'll just ID this tape. This is Jane Collings. This is the second part of
the interview with Burt Wilson. I am switching over to a tape rather
than the digital recorder, because there is something I don't understand
(laughter) about the digital recorder. And we'll resume -- we will carry
on with the tape for the moment, for the time being at least. OK. All
right.
-
WILSON
- Now wait a minute. Can you stop yours for a minute?
-
COLLINGS
- Sure.
-
COLLINGS
- OK. All right.
-
WILSON
- You asked about the organizing process, I think.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah.
-
WILSON
- OK. One thing -- Ed Koupal of People's Lobby, who did petitioning and was
able to bring about change through petitioning, he used to say you need
50 crazies, (laughter) and you could change California. That means 50
people who were crazy enough to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week
getting people's signatures. Of course, today they pay for it. In those
days, you didn't -- that's why you had to be crazy to do it. (laughter)
And so that's part.
-
- On the...for our part, for organizing, you first need an issue, and you
organize around that issue, and you have to articulate the different
points of it. When it comes down to the actual people, what it usually
comes down to is a few people doing the work, but making sure everybody
else gets equal credit. And so it's kind of, you're performing a
service. You sacrifice your ego for the good of the whole, is what it
comes down to. And this has spiritual principles for me that -- in that
because the difference between Zen Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism, for
instance, which is the Dalai Lama sect, is Zen Buddhism, you sit up on
top of the hill and contemplate your navel until you block everything
out of the world and become one with god, so to speak. In Mahayana
Buddhism, you be of service to others and lose your ego within the whole
-- that. And Manley Palmer Hall, who was one of my mentors and ran the
Philosophical Research Society here, of which I was on the board later,
after his death; I took over some of his speaking engagements -- Manley
used to say what the Zen Buddhist does is he may achieve liberation, but
it's an illusion. (laughter) So I have always preferred the public
service, and if for nothing else, for the fact it...people who are
trying to use other people for political or financial gain don't
understand it. They have -- when they come up against somebody who can't
be bought, they don't know what to do, except kill you. (laughter) Or
get you out of -- and I've got some things to talk about in that line,
too.
-
- But so what it was was -- I mean, I can't impress upon you enough the
fact that it was a team effort mainly between Tim [Brick] and I. And we
complemented each other so well, and Tim was so smart and so articulate,
and he understood everything I was doing, and I understood everything he
was doing. And we taught each other. We -- as we went along, we
cross-pollinated. And Tim couldn't be bought either, you know? And so
there was no way to come at us. And because we were articulate on the
issues, there was no way anybody internally could come at us, which is
what frequently happens, or somebody places one of their people in your
organization to try to disrupt you. And there might have been, as far as
that goes, but nothing could. And nothing ever did. It was -- to me, it
was a once in a lifetime deal. And that was mainly because of Tim and my
association with him. I think if Tim were the sole leader or if I were
the sole leader, oh, there'd have been problems.
-
COLLINGS
- Now, the whole thing -- the CAUSE action, as you might call it, was from
August '75 through January '76? Is that correct?
-
WILSON
- Yeah, that sounds about right.
-
COLLINGS
- That sort of six-month very concentrated...?
-
WILSON
- For the advance payments deal, yeah. Yeah. That was then. But CAUSE
extended long after that.
-
COLLINGS
- Right, right. That -- but that was for the ARCO...?
-
WILSON
- Right, right.
-
COLLINGS
- And so you were doing the -- you talked about the rallies, the boycott --
-
WILSON
- Yes.
-
COLLINGS
- -- the guerilla theater, and the leafleting. So those -- and Rippy the
Shark. So those --
-
WILSON
- Yeah.
-
COLLINGS
- -- were your -- those were some of the --
-
WILSON
- That was --
-
COLLINGS
- -- cornerstones of the...?
-
WILSON
- Everybody -- I used to put Rippy the [ARCO] Shark on top of my station
wagon -- strap it up there, you know -- and people would honk when I'd
ride down the street. Because we'd take it everywhere, because it was
such a symbol. And it grew into such a symbol. It was a brand name, you
know? It had that same integrity. (laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah, yeah. So what was -- the victory celebration was on January 24th,
1976. And what was the actual mani- you know, how was the victory
achieved? It was --
-
WILSON
- The victory --
-
COLLINGS
- -- ARCO dropped the deal?
-
WILSON
- -- the -- no. The victory was achieved when -- I'm sure Brown had --
[Governor Edmund Gerald] "Jerry" Brown [Jr.]-- had a hand in this, but
the Public Utilities Commission ended the deal. And they ended the deal
because too many people were not paying their gas bills and sending them
in to the PUC. That -- of course, they would never admit that. And
Batinovich and Ross tried to come out as heroes in the thing by saying,
"It was a bad deal for California, and we recognize that!" I mean, they
just made asses out of themselves, not to the public at large, probably,
or anybody in northern California, but certainly in southern California
they did! (laughter) Because they were going after it.
-
- And this was Brown... Afterwards, when we -- after the -- at the end of
the LNG fight, which I am getting a little ahead of myself, but -- Tim
did all this work in exposing the Brown family oil business, and we went
to Sacramento, and we had a meeting with Jerry Brown. And Jerry got up
and walked out of the meeting. So Tim and I went over to the Senator
Hotel and I called a news conference, and we put the thing up, and we
exposed the Brown family oil business. (laughter) And it made the
papers, and I mean, it awakened a few people that, I mean, the Brown
family was big in LNG and oil, especially in Indonesia, where [Governor
Edmund Gerald] "Pat" Brown [Sr.] went to -- Pat Brown went to Indonesia
at the request of the Indonesian government, Sukarno. He says, "I taught
him how to build freeways!" (laughter) I love Pat Brown; hated Jerry
Brown.
-
COLLINGS
- Were there any instances of what you might call "culture clash" between
-- among the groups that participated in CAUSE? I mean, you had 29
different groups. Were there...?
-
WILSON
- Not really, because you see, even though there were a lot of groups
involved, their involvement was leaders mainly coming to meetings and
taking notes to distribute backward. The biggest culture clash we had
was between the ideologues and those of us who didn't espouse any
ideology. And by "ideologues," I mean the Marxists, because they had a
-- and (laughter) this is what made it difficult, because they had an
ideological goal, you see? But I mean, you'll never find me out in a --
marching around a building saying, "The people united will never be
defeated!" You know, that wasn't my thing. I was not an ideologue.
Neither was Tim, although both of us have studied Marxism and Socialism.
As a matter of fact, we -- Tim and I put together that public enterprise
program that you saw in there, and I had two op-ed pieces in the L.A.
Times, you know, which those were significant, I felt, in articulating
-- and I congratulate the Times for printing them, you know?
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. I was really surprised to see those --
-
WILSON
- Yeah.
-
WILSON
- -- if it's in the packet that you sent? Yeah.
-
WILSON
- Yeah. Right, right. So that shows that -- you see, all of a sudden, after
that, we became legit. And then it became how long can you stay legit?
You see, my -- Tim's...and my -- I believe Tim agreed with me -- was
that if you wanted to keep on as a consumer-based organization fighting
the big utilities and so forth, you had to raise money. And then when
that happened, you had to spend more time raising money than doing the
actual organizing job, and that's what we didn't want to get into.
That's why I think both Tim and I had the idea that ad hoc organizations
around a single issue are important, because then you become like
everybody else, where you're mailing out invitations to a -- you know,
you get somebody to speak at this -- you know, I hate that. I just hate
it.
-
COLLINGS
- So were there people among these 29 groups who wanted the -- who wanted
CAUSE to go on to become --
-
WILSON
- Almost everybody did. Almost everybody did.
-
WILSON
- I've got to mention one person: Billie Heller. Billie Heller, her husband
was Liberace's agent. She lived over here in Beverly Hills. And Billie
Heller used to come to these meetings where -- which were -- you know,
we were all poor, you know, and she'd walk in in the latest Beverly
Hills fashions -- it was wonderful. And she felt so sorry for Tim that
she bought him a suit. (laughter) Tim never looked so good in his life,
you know?
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah, I'll bet it was a nice suit.
-
WILSON
- Oh, it was a beautiful wool pinstripe suit, you know? It was a wonder.
She was a wonderful woman. God bless that woman.
-
- We had a lot of wonderful women in the movement. And I would say that
half of the people who were from organizations were women. And there
were many senior citizens there, too, so it -- because you know, when
you're living on Social Security or something like that, a few dollars
here and there makes a difference. It really makes a difference. So it
was --
-
COLLINGS
- And was it mostly, like, white people that were in CAUSE?
-
WILSON
- Yes. Mmm hmm.
-
COLLINGS
- And from -- was it from the West Side? One of the newspaper articles
suggested that --
-
WILSON
- A little louder?
-
COLLINGS
- Was -- one of the newspaper articles suggested that it was a group of
West Side organizations. Is that the case, that it was mainly West Side
people?
-
WILSON
- No. Because we had an office on Pico Boulevard, that's where they got the
West Side deal.
-
COLLINGS
- I see. OK.
-
WILSON
- But we extended out into the Valley, too. No, it wasn't totally West
Side. I lived across the -- across Beverly Boulevard from Silver Lake at
that time. And there were many people around our area, too, that were
involved.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. Is there any complete listing of the 29 groups? Because, you know,
it's always mentioned that there were 29 groups. One of the articles
mentions Fight Inflation Together --
-
WILSON
- Yes!
-
COLLINGS
- -- Seniors for Legislative Issues --
-
WILSON
- Yes, yes.
-
COLLINGS
- -- Seniors for Political Action --
-
WILSON
- Yes.
-
COLLINGS
- -- Gray Panthers --
-
WILSON
- Uh-huh.
-
COLLINGS
- -- and the California Citizen Action Group.
-
WILSON
- Yeah.
-
COLLINGS
- But I was just wondering what the -- where I could find a list of what
the other groups were?
-
WILSON
- You can't.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. Why is that?
-
WILSON
- Because I don't think there ever was a complete list. That's because we
didn't want to list the Communist groups, the labor unions didn't want
to be listed because in many cases, their membership was split, but they
wanted to support it, and at least one of those organizations that you
just mentioned was maybe two people. (laughter) You see?
-
COLLINGS
- OK. Which one was that?
-
WILSON
- Seniors for Politician Action.
-
COLLINGS
- That was two people?
-
WILSON
- Yeah.
-
COLLINGS
- Oh, that's interesting.
-
WILSON
- (laughter) Ed Momen and Ed Novikov -- er, Herman Mulhman and Ed Novikov.
-
COLLINGS
- All right. Two -- they should've called it "Two Seniors for Political
Action."
-
WILSON
- Well, they were the two guys who loved to rant. And it -- they were
wonderful people, don't get me wrong, but there whole thing was...you
know, there's -- now that I'm all of 73, I can say this (laughter), is
that seniors -- frequently, there is a segment of seniors that feel life
when they're in conflict with something. And being able to express
conflict gives them energy. And that's what these two guys were. They
loved to fight. And I think what it was is that Tim and I both knew how
to use these people in certain situations, you see? And they ate it up,
and we all loved it, too.
-
COLLINGS
- What kind of situations would you use them in?
-
WILSON
- Well, I'll tell you. I'll never forget this. There was one situation on a
Gas Company issue. It might have been LNG -- where, again, I had written
a citizens' complaint, and I put in -- I was almost a barracks lawyer
when this was finished -- I put in all the citations from the law books
and everything, 25 signatures, filed it. We had a hearing. Ben Wolf, god
bless him, was the senior...I forget what his organization was, but when
we had the hearing, he showed up with three busloads of seniors down at
First and Broadway for the hearing. And we all got into the room, and
then Herman Mulhman and Ed Novikov started working them up. And I wrote
in there -- because I was on -- I was writing at this time also for The
Advocate, which was a paper that a guy started up to articulate
alternative views, which was later responsible for the unlisted number
issue. But we unleash Herman Mulhman on them, (laughter) and Ed Novikov,
and they got so rowdy -- and we were singing; I wrote songs for the --
all the movements, too --
-
COLLINGS
- Right, right, right.
-
WILSON
- -- you see. I wrote --
-
COLLINGS
- I've got that here.
-
COLLINGS
- -- eight or nine songs. I'll send you a copy of them.
-
COLLINGS
- OK. Well, here are two.
-
WILSON
- There's one, yeah. Yeah. Tim and I can still sing that song. (laughter)
-
- But anyway, the Public Utilities Commission judge went and got himself a
four-man police escort before he would walk into the room! Oh god, it
was funny! (laughter) To see him walking in with this escort of burly
sheriffs around him, you know?
-
COLLINGS
- Because of all of those --
-
WILSON
- As if we were going --
-
COLLINGS
- -- dangerous seniors?
-
WILSON
- -- to jump him, you know? And we were singing songs and everything, and
of course -- I mean, the media was there, and the media was eating this
up, of course. And this guy comes in with an armed escort. I can't --
that was wonderful. (laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- So would you send press releases to the media --
-
WILSON
- Absolutely.
-
COLLINGS
- -- in advanced of these -- yeah.
-
WILSON
- I turned out press releases like you wouldn't -- I learned to write a
press release. And then we would call -- you see, we would call the City
News Service, which would distribute our press release to everybody.
That was the easy way to do it. But later on, I established
relationships with the producers at the TV stations, who I would call
and say, "We're doing something today." "Thanks, Burt." Boom! They were
there. Because we made news. We were news. And that's the way it went.
(laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- Would you like to go on to talk about the -- well, the Lifeline comes
before the --
-
WILSON
- Tim knows about Lifeline. I know nothing about Lifeline.
-
COLLINGS
- All right. OK. I'll talk to him about that. And then the next thing was
the LNG event.
-
WILSON
- OK.
-
COLLINGS
- Well, the phone company issue came before the LNG --
-
WILSON
- No. Really?
-
COLLINGS
- I -- that's what I thought. But of course, (laughter) you know better.
-
WILSON
- OK. No, I don't know best. This was a long time ago, 30 years ago. I --
-
COLLINGS
- Because I thought I had these in chronological order, but...
-
WILSON
- Well, let's go to LNG next, because it still concerns the Gas Company.
Now, liquid natural gas is a gas which is frozen to 290 -- I still
remember this -- below Fahrenheit, in which it becomes liquid, and then
can be shipped in containers. And they wanted to bring this into L.A.
harbor. Disaster.
-
COLLINGS
- Down at San Pedro?
-
WILSON
- In San Pedro, right. They first wanted to bring it into Point Concepcion,
but as -- that was an environmental disaster, and we all knew it, and
they knew it. But they thought by going -- and they were correct in
their thinking of going to some place where it was uninhabited that they
would be better off, and they are correct in that. But I mean, they
picked the most dangerous currents for offloading a dangerous thing.
-
- Now, the thing about liquid natural gas is after it becomes a liquid,
it's delivered in these long tankers. Now, the tankers were not
double-hulled in those days. Today, they are, and the issue is still in
front of the people of California today. They had single-hulled tankers,
and they were as long as two and three football fields, and the thing
about those tankers is that nobody knew that they -- their engines had
to be put in full reverse five to ten miles before their docking point,
at which time they were virtually unmaneuverable. And this they wanted
to bring into L.A. harbor!
-
- Now, the thing about liquid natural gas is if it escapes, there are three
ways to die. Because it's heavier than air, it hugs the ground, and it
spreads out aground. Now, anything that comes in contact with -- it
asphyxiates every living thing it comes into contact with.
-
COLLINGS
- Because it sucks all the oxygen out?
-
WILSON
- Yeah. If it is ignited at any point, whoo! It goes up like that. And it
incinerates every living thing in its path. And I forget the third way,
but that's enough. And --
-
COLLINGS
- Freezing, wasn't it?
-
WILSON
- Pardon?
-
COLLINGS
- Freezing? Wasn't there something about how it could freeze...?
-
WILSON
- Yeah. Well, that's right. It either freezes or asphyxiates everything in
its path if it's still in the cloud, the white cloud. If it sets fire,
it incinerates everything. So there are your three ways to die. Thank
you.
-
- And of course, people didn't know this, and of course, nobody ever told
them. This was a huge environmental issue, and they wanted to bring it
into L.A. Harbor. Now, one of the things I remember most about this
besides my debate with Tunney was a debate I had with John Ferraro, who
was the USC All-American (laughter) at the City Council. Because I was
down there telling them -- telling people and the Council why they
shouldn't bring liquid natural gas into L.A. Harbor. I may be getting
ahead of myself on this issue. And Ferarro says, "Well, everybody takes
risks. You know, you take a risk when you fly an airplane!" And I said,
"Well, yeah, but that's a risk I choose to take. You're talking here
about a risk that is imposed upon me by my government." And out of that
sentence grew my op-ed piece: we deserve -- or the...we're -- we
shouldn't have -- according to the Constitution, life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. It implies that we're not going to put -- be put
in danger. And that was my op-ed piece that the L.A. Times printed.
-
- Now, talking to the City Council is like talking to a blank wall. You're
really down there talking to the media, and that's all. They've got it
all planned out. Everything's -- oh, god, what a -- what guys, you know?
What jerks. I mean, when I say that, I don't mean personally, but using
their offices to enrich themselves, and they're -- and personally, I
mean, there was one guy, Art Snyder, who was wrapping hair around the
penis of his son, and he got -- oh, he was doing terrible things.
And...Councilman [John] Gibson, who couldn't even think. I went down and
had a meeting with him when I was in Watts, and he would mostly be, (in
a slow voice) "Well, we don't like what you're doing down there, Mr.
Wilson." (laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- And did he say why?
-
WILSON
- What?
-
COLLINGS
- Did he say why?
-
WILSON
- No. It was just this -- you see, I was interfering with the city's plans,
and they don't want interference.
-
- But back to LNG. The next morning, Tim Brick calls me up. He says, "Burt,
you're a prophet!" I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "You haven't
seen the news yet?" And I said, "No." He says, "The Sandanista blew up
in L.A. Harbor last night!" (laughter) Now, the Sandanista was not an
LNG tanker, but it was a ship that blew up L.A. Harbor, you see, and so
everything was just -- you know, it was a -- everything was just
reinforced. That reinforced our --
-
COLLINGS
- There wasn't any -- ever any suggestion that your group was involved, was
there?
-
WILSON
- No. No. No, no, no. That was another thing. But now, here's what I
consider to be one of the keys to our victory, because we did end up
keeping liquid natural gas out of L.A. Harbor, is that what I did --
because you know, visuals -- I took a Monopoly board and covered it with
paper, and I made -- I took a city map, and I made an outline -- a very
good one -- of L.A. Harbor, the entrance and L.A. Harbor. Then I created
these little tankers out of clay, and I painted them, you see? And then
(laughter) I called a news conference down there, and not only the local
media showed up, but the regional media showed up, too. And I said, "You
want to know what happens to LNG? Here's what happens: it's frozen
(inaudible). Now," and I said, "here's the LNG tanker coming in. Let's
say it" -- and then I took out this large wad of cotton, and I said,
"The first thing it does is it spreads out in this white cloud, where it
freezes or asphyxiates everything within its path." And then I took a
match and I lit it on the side, you know? And this thing just goes
FWOOSH! like that, and all the cameras are coming in, you know? "Or, it
incinerates everything in its path." And it was such a demonstration you
wouldn't believe it. I did one interview on Channel 4 on a morning show,
and I remember the Gas Company said they're not coming if he brings that
demonstration. (laughter) Because it was so vivid, you know? Here was
the cloud, and there it was, VWOOM!, incinerated. I mean...
-
COLLINGS
- And what kind of arguments did they use to rebut that? Do you -- on --
when you would go on --
-
WILSON
- We were going to run out of energy by -- LNG by 1995. It was scare
tactics, and it was all scare tactics. You might want to ask Tim about
this, but Tim -- see, I left here in 1998, and Tim, after he became part
of the Establishment -- I mean, excuse my words -- he ran into, like,
women who worked as secretaries at the Gas Company and everything, and
she said that "you and Burt Wilson gave the gas company more late
nights" -- that they were -- "they spent days and days just trying to
figure out how to combat you guys." See, they had their own (inaudible)
and everything.
-
- I was -- I filed a -- I joined a complaint about the Gas Company's
profits. Because in those days, you could intermingle profits among
their companies: Pacific Lighting, which was a holding company for
Southern California Gas, which also owned the diamond walnut growers and
everything. And you could move profits around to benefit other things.
And I began talking about this. I have the testimony, and I had that Gas
Company cornered in moving around profits, mingling profits from other
interests with the Gas Company profits. And I had him cornered, and it
was late in the afternoon, and I mean, he was taking -- he was sitting
up on that -- and he was -- because he knew that where I was leading him
was to say that they mingled profits.
-
- The hearing examiner -- who I always felt was on the side of the Gas
Company, anyway -- says, "All right, that's enough. We'll resume
tomorrow." We went in the next morning, he got up on there, and the
hearing examiner said, "Repeat Mr. Wilson's last question." He repeated
it. He ran off on a string (laughter) that he had rehearsed. You know,
they had gone and rehearsed him all night before to come in and say what
he had to say the next day. But that was -- it was fun playing barracks
lawyer with all of that.
-
- But the LNG, we once again -- we used the same tactics as in the
ARCO-Southern California Gas deal, and we were able to articulate the
position -- especially the fears -- to the point where people understood
that a fear later of lack of gas was not as -- was far behind the
present fear of being killed by it. And we cited -- we kept citing an
actuary put out by somebody -- I forget now -- which said that within a
hundred-year period there'd be two accidents. And now today, they're
still trying to get liquid natural gas into California, but what they've
done is they've positioned the intake point a mile offshore, where it
runs through a tube and they offload it a mile out. The problem is then
that the ship is a shooting duck for terrorists.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. And isn't there going to be a depot in Baja California? I think --
-
WILSON
- Where?
-
COLLINGS
- Baja California?
-
WILSON
- Yeah, there -- yeah. I think they have one there now, or they're
contemplating it. But they want to bring it into San Diego, L.A., some
place up north. I'm not familiar -- although I did write a letter
recently, and I wrote an article for the Sacramento Bee -- they didn't
print it -- about the dangers of LNG, because whether it's a mile
offshore or not, if something still happens to the ship or something
like that, it's -- the prevailing winds would blow the cloud on the
shore. There's no guarantee that it's going to completely dissipate
before it reaches land.
-
- We -- I must say, every one of us was an environmentalist. Every one of
us. We were all aware of the environmental disasters that these things
could cause in the name of -- you know? And we were all against any
drilling in Prudhoe Bay or the North Slope, or anything like that.
-
COLLINGS
- And do you think -- I wonder if one of the reasons why these two
campaigns were so successful was that there was a general belief in the
society at that time that perhaps they didn't need to have such large,
energy-driven lifestyles? There was, at that time, a sort of an
examination of the American way of life, and interest in making one's
lifestyle greener and more environmentally sound.
-
WILSON
- Well, I think we articulated that premise in the costs: that this would
all decrease our lifestyles, and -- because it would -- once you get
something into the infrastructure, it doesn't go back out again. It's
there forever. This is why medical costs are so high now: because they
keep inventing new machines which doctors for years and years and years
did without, but now they have so they can charge for them. Then they
become part of -- and the rates go up, and everything like that. That's
a whole other story. But that's precisely what it was with LNG: it would
lower the standard of living for a lot of people. And we articulated
that, and the people understood that.
-
COLLINGS
- They understood that their standard of living would be lowered if they
did not have this energy source?
-
WILSON
- No, no -- they thought it would be if they did, because there would be
more to pay -- the rates would go up. Every -- see, everybody understood
that the rates never go down. (laughter) They always go up, you see? And
this is why our position that we articulated was one of public
enterprise, which was having municipal utilities throughout the state of
California. Like I live in Sacramento. We have a municipal utility --
SMUD. And our rates are much lower than a PG&E [Pacific Gas and
Electric]. And why can't we have this throughout...?
-
- But because -- you see, utilities, because they are utilities, because
they are regulated utilities -- regulation doesn't mean that they can't
make a profit. Regulation means -- is that the only way they can make a
profit is by expanding their rate base, which is why -- happens through
building more facilities, which takes away land, which take- we harped
on this all the time, you know? They're going to grab this, and they're
going to grab that, because on a regulated utility, that's the only way
you can increase profits, and everybody's goal was to increase profits.
And just because it was regulated by the PUC doesn't mean a thing,
because they can justify a rate increase if they can come in and say,
"Our rate of return to our base has to be increased so we can make a
profit to pay our stockholders." And Europeans laugh at us because we
pay a stockholder profit on the utilities. It's totally... But you see,
even though schools are socialism, and roads are socialism, and things
like this, the opponents will wave the S-word every time. They'll say,
"They're trying to socialize duh-duh-duh. You want the government
running your utilities? You'll be blacked out in a day! You won't" --
you know? And this is -- I'm sorry to say, but this is an understandable
issue with the people. And they will vote against their own interests
every time because of that -- you wave the S-word, and it's gone. So we
tried to always avoid that part of it, because we knew we couldn't win
on that level.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. So yeah, I'm just -- I guess I'm just wondering how much the social
activist climate of the Seventies helped you along with your political
efforts? I mean, what if you were doing the same things today?
-
WILSON
- Well...I'm mostly writing today. (laughter) My interests have changed.
But I mean, up until a few years ago, I almost got -- I moved back to
New York for -- upstate New York for two years, and I exposed our local
state Senator [Tom Libous] selling sportswear out of his Senate office,
and the Democrats wanted to run me against him! (laughter) Because I was
his biggest nightmare at that time. But you have to be a five-year
resident. But I worked for Citizen Action back in New York, but...
-
- It was the Sixties and the hippie movement and so forth that raised the
consciousness of everybody toward social action. Now, what happened --
I'm going to give you an insight on this. I'm a big fan of Thomas
[Paine], and I've written -- especially his theology, and I've read
everything he's ever written. But in a biography of Thomas [Paine], I
was reading that when he was a tax collector in England under [King]
George III that people were talking about overthrowing the king. It was
in the hamlets and villages; everybody was -- riots were fomenting. I
mean, a movement was fomented in the streets. So what George III --
probably his advisors -- did was they released gin, which was the drink
of the aristocracy, into the local pubs. And within a week, everybody --
women and children were falling-down drunk in the streets. No movement.
End of movement, end of revolt -- everything done. Now, I am convinced
that somewhere, there's a book where things like this are all written
down, and it's inherited by kings and presidents, OK?
-
- So now let's switch to the Sixties, you see, and drugs. Because the
problem with the hippie movement -- it had a chance. There were two
things that ruined the hippie movement. One was it devolved into drugs,
sex, and rock n' roll. And the other one was that they couldn't accept
anybody's leadership. "Don't trust any authority." This was the biggest
-- I mean, if they only knew that -- you know, every conductor -- every
orchestra has a conductor; a ship has to have a captain, you know? You
need leadership. You need enlightened leadership. But they didn't trust
anybody, you see? And so the government, you see, was -- has been in the
dope business every since the beginning of the Vietnam War. The Politics
of Heroin in Southeast Asia, that book. I mean, the CIA is bringing it
back in diplomatic pouches and everything. So that -- so all the agent
provocateurs went out and started giving everybody dope, and get
everybody hooked on -- end of movement, you see?
-
- But still, that and people like Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King
[Jr.], you see -- and then they got assassinated. And you see, all three
-- the two Kennedys and Martin Luther King -- the real story of their
assassination has surfaced, but I mean, it was all government/CIA/mafia
plots. The government has been taken over by the mafia as far as I'm
concerned, and people don't even know it because when -- The Godfather,
Kate says to Sonny, "Sonny, you promised me by 1957 it would all be
legit!" You see? Because all their sons and daughters have gone to
Harvard now, and there are holding companies that have holding companies
and everything, and they buy off the politicians, and they buy off the
local judges, not in a buy-off -- giving an envelope to somebody on a
dark street, but providing them with trips and this and all -- you know,
like this guy in San Diego recently who just caught. Everybody's bought
off. The government is bought and paid for. And there's nothing anybody
can do about it because nobody can get it together, and if a hero ever
did emerge -- and believe me, a lot have tried -- they'd kill him. And I
think the only hope today is for an economic disaster, and we'd have to
start all over again. And I don't think we're that far from it!
(laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- You sometimes wonder these days. Did you have any examples in the things
-- movements that you were trying to organize of instances where people
from the Left refused to take -- to be organized or to take direction,
or to accept any kind of leadership? I mean, were there --
-
WILSON
- Well, CAUSE, they accepted our leadership, yes. They absolutely accepted
our leadership, and the only reason they did it is because Tim and I
spent the time necessary to understand the issue. And you see, in
organizations, the way somebody takes over -- you know, just as if --
let's say a martial arts class instructor, if somebody comes in and
wants to take over his class, he's got to have a fight with the
instructor; if he wins, he wins the class, you see? In the movement, you
articulate better than somebody else, and that way you bring people to
your side -- things like that. And --
-
COLLINGS
- Let me flip -- [END OF AUDIO FILE]
1.3. Session 2B ( December 5, 2005)
-
WILSON
- OK. In the movement, you -- people come at you by articulating the issues
better. And there wasn't anybody in CAUSE who could articulate the
issues better than Tim or I. Now, that was a great -- a part of it. But
the other part of it was where -- that we were co-coordinators, you
know? You can't fight two guys who can articulate the issues. It was
that time in history when everything came together in the proper way. We
didn't know it. You only understand this by analyzing it later, you
know? But that was the thing: nobody could knock you off when you've got
two coordinators. They can't knock off two guys.
-
- But we inspired leadership. I mean, afterwards, oh god. I mean, people
came to me to lead all sorts of causes. And I ended up leading the tax
revolt in the Valley with a bunch of right wingers! And that was tough.
Taxpayers United for Freedom. But I don't know; that's -- you know?
-
COLLINGS
- That's another story, right?
-
WILSON
- Yeah.
-
COLLINGS
- When -- now, when did CAUSE disband, so to speak?
-
WILSON
- CAUSE disbanded after the phone company issues, because there were no
more issues. What kind of you -- the Department of Water and Power, we
had a guy on the rate-making committee. We defeated the ARCO Southern
California Gas deal. We defeated LNG. We stopped the phone company from
charging for Information calls for a number of years. We exposed the
phone companies giving out unlisted numbers without a warrant. We got
them to change their whole procedure on that, because we either -- said
you either do this or end the 15-cent charge for having your number
unlisted, which was specious. So -- and it was after that -- after the
phone issue of unlisted numbers, there were suddenly no more issues.
-
- And I look back on it now, and I see that what happened was the playing
field had changed, and it was the utilities which changed the playing
field. And from then on, it was like the phone company putting this guy
Doug Cameron on me, you know? We made them -- to combat Tim and I, they
had to change the way they did things. So the way they changed things
was to be a consumer advocate on a big issue -- not a local issue, and
there are plenty of local issues that we didn't get involved in because
we were always on state-wide issues -- that you had to almost be a
lawyer to do things. And that's the way they changed the playing field:
that you couldn't be a guy off the streets with a few smart to come in
and -- with nothing to lose and take on the utilities. You had to be a
lawyer. You see? And that's when the whole playing field changed. And I
could feel it. I could feel that I was -- it's like being somebody in a
business (laughter) who your job is suddenly outmoded one day, there's
no use for you anymore. And there always in on local -- and things you
can do something about. But now you had to have a team of lawyers in
back of you.
-
COLLINGS
- So they were just simply protecting themselves legally on every front?
-
WILSON
- Exactly.
-
COLLINGS
- Whereas before, they had not bothered because nobody had been challenging
them?
-
WILSON
- Our actions changed the way they wrote the procedures on the back of the
gas bills. They wrote that out so people couldn't just file a complaint
if they felt like it, which they could in those days, which we
discovered and went after. The phone company changed their rules on
unlisted numbers and other things. They eventually got -- one of our
biggest things with the phone company -- this was wonderful -- was they
wanted people to pay for calls to Information. And remember, at that
time, you didn't have to pay for Information calling. So they had it
before the Public Utilities Commission that they wanted to institute a
-- I forget what it was at the beginning -- five, ten, or 15 cents
charge for information. So I looked through the regulations and
everything, and I concluded that in order to charge for information, we
had to have access to the numbers through phone books. Because what they
wanted to do was cut down phone book usage -- you see what they're
thinking?
-
- Of course -- let me digress a minute. Every utility -- and I can't say it
-- this wasn't planned a long time ago -- suddenly realized that
anything they could bifurcate or separate or put off into its own little
area became a profit lever. And any time you wanted to raise profits,
all you had to do was hit this lever here. Operator charges, Information
charges, unassisted numbers -- you know, the whole thing, they became
profit levers. So this was a profit lever. But at the time, you could
make the case -- which is what I did -- that it's -- oh, what's the word
for it? There's a constitutional word -- confiscatory. It's confiscatory
to charge us for looking at -- have an operator look under -- up an
unlisted number if we don't have the directory.
-
- So we called a news conference, and we asked everybody, "This is what the
phone company wants to do." And of course, the phone company would deny
it. "So call up the phone company and order all the directories
(laughter) to be delivered to your house." Well, somebody in the phone
company sent me an internal memory --
-
COLLINGS
- Memo.
-
WILSON
- -- memo that the phone company was saying, "Try to dissuade them on the
phone, and by all means don't mention this -- the Catalina directory
because the insurance would (inaudible)." So we said, "Ask for all the
directories, especially the Catalina directory!" (laughter) And then on
my TV show, we started -- we had a person coming on, and we had this big
-- I mean, when you -- they were delivered, it was this high, with --
it's bundled in twine. So we had a person saying, "What you can do with
your phone directories!" They make good scratching posts for cats. You
can put a tray on them, (laughter), you know, and all this stuff. I
mean, we just -- ridicule is the greatest thing in the world when you're
fighting power, is ridicule. And this was ridicule.
-
- Well, then all of a sudden we won. And I think this is probably the best
thought I ever had in the whole movement, because there we are, we've
won, and we've got nothing more to fight, you know? So I called up Peter
Christiansen, and I said, "Let's go around and collect all the
directories and return them to the phone companies." (laughter) So we
got in my station wagon -- his -- we went all over; we collected all
their -- and we called the news media, and there we were (laughter)
carting the directories -- cameras everywhere. Oh god, the phone company
hated it. (laughter)
-
- So we milked that situation for more, and it was wonderful media. It was
wonderful theater, because that's when you get -- when you get right
down to it, it's theater, you know? Theater in the purest sense, from
(inaudible) , when theater began as a means to instruct people in
things. Moral issues.
-
COLLINGS
- It sounds like so much of what you did was theater. Did you have an
interest in theater all along?
-
WILSON
- Oh, yeah. I was (inaudible) in junior college, I did a number of plays.
And I've always been a musician and an MC in my bands, and you always
have to tell jokes, you know? And I almost won an Army talent contest in
Colorado Springs with my ukulele and jokes, snappy patter, and... So I
was very comfortable on the stage. I always have been. I don't know why,
but since I was a kid, I never feared getting up in front of people and
talking. And Tim didn't, either. Tim could get up with anybody, and he'd
just make it up as he went along. Tim was wonderful. (laughter) It was
wonderful.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. Well, you must have missed CAUSE after you left it.
-
WILSON
- Well, it's like when I left Watts. Can you imagine leaving Watts after
six years of every Saturday and Sunday -- and most Thursdays and
Fridays, as far as that goes? Six years!
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. That's a long time.
-
WILSON
- -- of spending every weekend in Watts. My first weekend, I didn't know
what to do. I did not know what to do. And it was then that I realized,
well, dummy, (laughter) this is what you do. You know? But I have never
been one to go out and look for something to do, because in those days
you didn't have to. There was a much -- so much chicanery going on that
everywhere you looked, there was something you could get involved in.
And I said to myself, "Well, you know..." I mean, because you -- it's on
a scale. You weigh things, and you think -- the old paradigm was, "I
have to make a lot of money to look out for my retirement, and do this."
On the other hand, I'm single, I'm free, I can do -- that's one thing
about my life: I've done exactly what I've wanted to do my whole life.
I've never had to compromise. And how many people can say that, you
know? So I was available! (laughter) And I had found a calling, you
know?
-
- And sadly -- I tried to capitalize on that when I ran for office, State
Assembly. And I would've; I found out later that Mike Roos, who actually
won that race -- I should've pulled out of the race. Dave Roberti, who
was the president of the Senate, said he was going to support me. He
withdrew support me -- he withdrew support and threw it behind Sabrina
Schiller, who was a carpetbagger whose husband Bob wrote for All in the
Family. And after every event that we spoke, Bob would come up to me,
and he'd say, "You're the best guy in the race." (laughter) I loved him
for that.
-
COLLINGS
- So right after CAUSE was when you ran for Assemblyman?
-
WILSON
- I ran for Assemblyman in 1977 because [Assemblyman Charles] Charlie
Warren, who as a politician was a backer of CAUSE, went to join the
[President Jimmy] Carter administration in the energy field. Charlie
introduced a lot of bills, and he and I were good friends. And so it was
an open race, and 17 people ran. And I had found out that somebody had
done a poll in a district, and I had a 9% name recognition already in
the district through my CAUSE activities. And I thought I would be able
-- I would probably be a single-term (laughter) Assemblyman, but I might
be able to create enough, (laughter) you know, in my two years.
-
- I shouldn't have run. I mean, I was one of those people that was -- you
wouldn't think it from what we did, but I was naïve in many ways. I
learned things about the inner workings, and I learned them the hard
way. And one was this: it was that Mike Ruce financed four other people
in that race. He financed the senior citizen guy, the Japanese guy, the
Filipino guy... I got the black vote. I got -- because my district
extended down near Watts, and I was friends with all the black
ministers, including the guy who worked with Martin Luther King, James
-- I can't remember his name now. But all -- I was -- the black
ministers supported me. And I went around the black churches, and I
found out that I could -- this was a lot of fun -- I could speak in a
black cadence. I could start out slow, like Martin Luther King did, and
gradually increase, you know? And lead people along step by step
(inaudible) do. And it was a wonderful, wonderful -- I love black
people. I mean -- of course, I was black in my last life, so...
(laughter) A black piano player in New Orleans.
-
- So...I remember that. But he financed four other people in the race. Now,
here's the thing: he won the race with 6,000 votes, and I came in third
or fourth with about 2,600-2,700. And that was a special election in May
of 1977. In the regular election in November of 1977, I ran for
Democratic County Committee, and I headed the ticket with over 10,000
votes, you see? So his splitting the vote by financing four other guys
really won him the election.
-
- Now, let me say this: everything I just said was my opinion, and
(overlapping dialogue; inaudible)
-
COLLINGS
- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah -- of course. Now, was there ever any thinking
among the CAUSE participants or you and Burt that CAUSE could perhaps go
into other kinds of efforts, like American foreign policy or other...?
Because you say there were no more issues. Was there ever any thinking
that you might change the agenda, the kinds of things that you were
going after?
-
WILSON
- Well, the only way -- you see, the driving factor in our success was this
was money coming out of people's pockets, and it was their personal
self-interest. Those other causes --
-
COLLINGS
- Too abstract?
-
WILSON
- -- it -- I mean, where you have 99 in the personal self-interest, it goes
down to one percent where it's a national issue, and do I have time to
do -- do I want to worry about this? I mean... That's why I'm in love
with USC football right now: because it takes my mind off [President]
George [W.] Bush and the Iraq War and all of that, you know? I'm
serious! Otherwise, I would...don't get me started. (laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah, really. (laughter)
-
WILSON
- But also, I have a website now on which I talk about that stuff. It's
called "Ancient Wisdom for the 21st Century." And I get 3,000 hits a
month. And what I do is I articulate spiritual issues in a sense of what
it means to a person in daily life, rather than (inaudible) the cosmos,
you know, or...
-
COLLINGS
- Right, right, right. So the daily life issues are like a real cornerstone
for --
-
WILSON
- Exactly.
-
COLLINGS
- -- everything that you were doing?
-
WILSON
- Exactly. OK. So whether you believe in reincarnation or do you believe?
Why is there reincarnation? How does karma work, you know? Those are
things -- and I get 3,000 visits a month from all over the world.
-
COLLINGS
- Did you have these kinds of spiritual interests while you were doing all
of this very --
-
WILSON
- Yes.
-
COLLINGS
- -- very practical --
-
WILSON
- Yes.
-
COLLINGS
- -- political activity?
-
WILSON
- Yes. It was something I drew upon. It was something I drew upon because
it was like -- I treated it not as if I was getting the bad guys,
because you always have to have respect for your opponent. When you lose
respect for your opponent, that's when they turn around and bite you
when you least expect it. But I looked upon it as an education, from my
standpoint. I looked upon it -- I was educating myself in government; I
was educating myself in human relationships; I was educating myself in
movement politics, which involves both of them; and I was learning,
learning, learning about people and issues, and the way things work, and
especially how people respond to different things. Because that's the
whole thing. I used to say in my speeches responsibility is the ability
to respond, you see? And not everybody is responsible in that way. They
don't want to respond. They say, "Don't bother me with that," you know?
And I would try to -- not in this way I'm explaining it now, but people
think that -- you know, they draw two circles: here's the world, and
here's me. And I'm outside of this issue. But I said, "No, here's the
world, and here's you. You can't escape!" (laughter) You have by the
very aspect of your birth a responsibility towards the common good and
humanity. And that's what drives me. You see, there's a -- there is a
fragment of the ancient wisdom which says you can not advance -- now,
they're speaking of spiritual advancement, which one doesn't think about
anyway, but this applies to material wisdom as well -- is that you can
not speak your advancement in competition over others. You can only seek
your own advancement in the advancement of all. And that was my basic
philosophy, you see, is that if -- and even as -- if you can empower
other people. My philosophy was to give people empowerment over their
own lives, and that's what it was all about.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. Are there -- in the organization, were there other -- like younger
people, perhaps? Is there anything that you can point to as being the
legacy of CAUSE? Perhaps other groups in Los Angeles, or perhaps young
people that took you as an example?
-
WILSON
- Well, those are things you never know. It was just like out of all the
people who came to Watts, I have a -- I still keep -- I have a stack of
letters from people who came down to Watts and worked with me who wrote
me a letter later thanking me for the experience. And what they -- they
-- "Oh, I never knew it was like that," you know? Or -- and it -- the
best thing we did is we allowed people to overcome their fear of black
people. Because nobody would admit that, but that is a basic primal fear
that they had. I had it, too. I had to overcome that. I mean, you don't
want to think you have it, you don't want to admit that you have it, but
basically you do. (laughter) And you have to overcome that.
-
- But our legacy, it's like then -- I don't know what happened to those
people, you know? I mean, I was given an award by Aleph Zadik Aleph, a
Jewish organization in the Valley, for my work. So I know I must have
influenced a few kids in that, you know? And you never -- there's a
thing in the ancient wisdom where you say you never calculate the effect
of what you do. You spread it, and then karma will pick it up here and
there, and that takes care of it. If I was working in a results-oriented
mindset, I would not be able to have done the things I did. You have to
do it and not worry about the other. That will take care of itself some
ways. And I never look to follow it up, but I know a lot of people
looked up to me, and I tried to leadership, and I tried to be a
responsible leader at all times. And I hope I was.
-
COLLINGS
- Now, when did you stop broadcasting? You --
-
WILSON
- Start?
-
COLLINGS
- Stop?
-
WILSON
- Stop?
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah.
-
WILSON
- Oh, OK. The -- my defeat in the election -- and that was funny, because
Tom Hayden is who -- Jane Fonda gave me $500. I mean, she said, "Burt,
if you want me to distribute stuff at supermarkets, I'll be glad." She's
a wonderful woman. I ran into her a few years ago again. She remembers
me. And Tom supported me. Of course, we supported -- Tom's campaign
against Tunney was going on at the same time, and Fred Branfman, who is
a big politico now, good strategist, we interlocked our campaigns around
Tom's movement for econ-
-
- Now, there's a thing: Tom was never able to pull off his campaign for
economic democracy, even with people like Derek Shearer backing him up,
who is a wonderful strategist and -- you know, a little on the elitist
side, but... Because...you see, this is my own idea, but I'm pretty
confident with it: when you go out and try to create a movement in back
of yourself, you are suspect to so many people because you're doing it
for your own self-aggrandizement. And people understand that, whether
they deli- you know, consciously understand it or not. There's something
about it that "I'm being used here. I'm a soldier in this..." And on the
other hand, there are political junkies who will -- at any -- at the
drop of a hat, follow you around and do anything. But those things never
worked when there was a leader like that. I -- and Tim, too -- have
always been for diversity, you see, and we also tried to diversify the
process, because if you -- if you're -- if the Gas Company is fighting
one target, that's one thing. If they've got three or four targets, then
they have to diffuse their forces. And in a 29-member coalition, we had
diversity. But the other -- when people try to organize things behind a
personality, or a leader, or something like that, diversity goes, and it
becomes a pyramidic organization, top-down. And people I think
understand that subconsciously, of what's really happening there. And I
think -- that's why Tim and I came up with Public Enterprise. Public
Enterprise was a state bank, a state insurance company, state-run
utilities, and something else. And we felt this would free the people of
California.
-
COLLINGS
- Insurance, I think, was the other one.
-
WILSON
- Insur- I mentioned insurance, yeah. Because insurance is a big issue. The
insurance companies are losing millions of dollars a day because they
can't invest it fast enough! (laughter) And so we called it "Public
Enterprise" rather than socialism, you know? And later, I was recruited
and I joined the Democratic Socialists of America. I was the head of the
L.A. office. And I will never forget my relationship with Michael
Harrington, who was one of the most brilliant men I have ever met in my
life. And Irving Howe, the writer. Again, I mean, I got to hobnob with
great people.
-
- But -- and of course, they needed me, because I was the consumer guy with
all the publicity in Los Angeles. And I have a socialist mind, but I m
not a communist or a socialist, but what I found out -- I only last a
year, maybe a year and a half -- when I went to their meetings, they
were all academics, and their show of power was which old man could walk
around with the youngest blonde chick on their arm, you see? And that
was their whole thing. And all they were interested in was making
debating points on issues. And like Harold Meyerson, who was my friend,
who was a columnist with the L.A. Weekly and also the Washington Post
now, he said, "We consider ourself the left wing of the Democratic
Party." Well, they don't DO anything -- they just try to infuse ideas to
work themselves up. I'm a doer, you see? And none of them were do --
none of them ever did a thing. Michael Harrington wrote great books, and
one of them influenced President Kennedy: The Other America. And he was
a brilliant thinker, just a brilliant thinker, and I enjoyed my
association with him.
-
- And one night -- I don't know what led me to this, but Ed Koupal, founder
of People's Lobby, we had a meeting over in the Chateau Marmont, and at
that meeting, myself and Ed Koupal, Harry Chapin, Ralph Nader, a singer
-- Jerry Brown's girlfriend [Linda Ronstadt] -- and a couple of other
movie actresses. And Harry Chapin sat down in the middle of the floor
and outlined a plan to, in a sense, take over America. To take back
America, you know? And he was one of the most passionate people I have
ever met, politically, you know? And I liked his plan because it was
diversified. And he was for building diverse movements around issues in
different areas, and I think that'll work. I think that'll work. And you
have a loose-knit collaboration, you see? And I was enthralled at that.
And within a year, Harry was dead. I mean, not that he was assassinated.
He was dead. He died from something else. But that was a wonderful...
-
COLLINGS
- So yeah, that was kind of an example of how you --
-
WILSON
- Could do it, yeah.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah -- stepped into some of the other kinds of --
-
WILSON
- But I --
-
COLLINGS
- -- social issues.
-
WILSON
- -- never, and Tim never, and Harry Chapin never -- and this is where we
disagree with Ralph Nader, because we disagreed with a lot on Ralph,
because I think Ralph has shown his true colors. I mean, the first time
Ralph started supporting a candidate, he vote- he supported Conway
Collis for Board of Equalization in the 1990s. I mean, he should've
never gotten into politics. And this frequent running for President,
that shows -- one of my friends -- musician friends who was a secretary
of the Sacramento Labor Council, Tom Kennedy, I think he called Tom
Hayden and Ralph Nader an "eco freak," because -- he says, "You're not
an eco freak, are you, Burt?" (laughter) I said, "No, I'm not." But you
know, that's what happens when you think -- because YOU know what's
going on, you think if you go out on the street corner and say it that
you'll build a following, and it ain't necessarily so.
-
COLLINGS
- Yeah. Now, did you have any particular dealings with Ralph Nader when you
working with CAUSE?
-
WILSON
- No. We might have gotten some -- Joan Claybrook worked for him
(inaudible). We might have gotten some statistics from Joan, but Ralph
was into a whole other thing. We were -- we felt we were on the same
side, but you see -- who's the guy? He was a good friend of me at one
time. Who did the thing against the insurance companies back in the
'90s? Harry...?
-
COLLINGS
- We'll get the name.
-
WILSON
- He was a Ralph Nader disciple, you see? They're all out there doing
things to try to build an organization. We did things never thinking of
trying to build an organization.
-
COLLINGS
- Right. That's what I was wondering.
-
WILSON
- See, and that's the big difference, because there's no
self-aggrandizement involved. And people -- I go back subconsciously,
see somebody out there, and they say, "Well, some guy's trying to be --
he's running for office." You don't know how many times I got accused of
running for office -- and then I finally ran for office! (laughter) And
I had to think about that, you know? It might have been a big mistake.
When Senator [David A.] Roberti pulled out, I should've pulled out, too,
but...
-
- But it was after that that I quit my radio program ["What You Can Do for
Your Country"]. I turned my radio program over to Tim, by the way, and
Tim [Brick] ran it for several years after that, doing a -- he called it
"Common Sense." Tim's very good at doing that sort of thing.
-
COLLINGS
- Now, did you pull out of the broadcasting because -- in the same way that
you left CAUSE? You felt that you didn't have a particular issue that
you needed to address at that time?
-
WILSON
- Well, I'll...let me be more specific. Losing an election is about the
worst thing that can ever happen to you. Because you feel that you let
everybody down. And I was just devastated when I lost the election,
because there were so many people who were -- who did work for me,
including my son [Steven Ashley Wilson], and my son was living in our
community house by then. And he was also a probationary disciple of my
guru. Now, our -- the disciples of my teacher, we had all gone in and
bought a ranch up in Oregon -- only 24 acres, but it was a place to go.
I went up there, and then I decided that...my motivations were twofold.
One, I didn't want to get involved in an organization that had to raise
money, and that's the way things seemed to be going. I (inaudible). The
other thing is, I wanted to change my life, because I had done this at
various times, and I just pulled up stakes and gone.
-
- So I went up to Oregon, and I went up to Portland, where I had friends,
and I became the head of the broadcast department of a business school
[Head of Broadcasting Section of the Northwest College of Business]
there. (laughter). And played in a jazz band four nights a week also.
And I had a great time. And I used to go up and visit my friends Barry
and Carol [Durkee] in Seattle. Carol is that Carol. My friend Barry had
a heart attack; one of my best friends, died at 50. Carol was his widow.
And Carol and I have known each other since we were 13, in junior high
school. So gradually, we got together. But I had a great time up there,
and I had a great time teaching school. I always considered myself a
good teacher. And then the management changed, and it got awfully -- oh,
bad. Really bad. I was brought in because they were about to lose 36
students because they didn't have the proper leadership in the
department, and I was the one that saved their $3,000 times 36, saved
that money.
-
- So from there, I went to New York, because I had -- my guru lives in New
York, and I had friends there, and I got -- I lived on -- I lived in
[New] Jersey. I got a job in the Empire State Building at an ad agency
managing an ad agency, 66th floor, which packaged menswear campaigns and
sent them out all over the country. So I was using my graphic talents as
well as my production -- radio and television production talents. And
that was a lot of fun.
-
COLLINGS
- And you were completely out of issues?
-
WILSON
- Completely out. Then I had thyroid cancer, so I went to the hospital, and
they fired me while I was in the hospital -- (laughter) nice of them to
do. And I was home recuperating, and Tim calls -- because I always keep
in touch all my old friends. Tim and I have always been in touch. And he
says, "Burt, come on out here. I got a place for you on the Campaign
against the Peripheral Canal." And I said, "I'm outta here!" (laughter)
And a week later, I was in Los Angeles -- living in Pasadena, actually
-- working with Tim on the campaign to defeat the Peripheral Canal. You
know what that is?
-
COLLINGS
- The -- from --
-
WILSON
- A cement ditch from Sacramento to Stockton. Yeah. Well, we had the worst
part of that time, because we had to convince people in southern
California not to take as much water --
-
COLLINGS
- Right. I --
-
WILSON
- -- from northern California.
-
COLLINGS
- -- would think that would be a tough one.
-
WILSON
- Well, that was -- well, I'll tell you what happened. (laughter) I had
visual aids, you know? I had a big cement ditch, and then all of this
stuff. And we were -- again, we were able to articulate the issues. And
I kicked off the campaign by calling a news conference which featured
Tim. I was in charge of free media -- in other words, showtime, getting
things on the media for free. And we had a lot of stunts, but we did a
really good job, and it was because of the graphics that we had that we
convinced Channel 2 to be on our side -- the only station in southern
California to go against. And the station manager, as he was walking out
of the room, he says, "Nice graphics." (laughter)
-
- So we won southern California, and everybody thought that from the
beginning, it was ours to lose. I mean, the whole election was ours to
lose. So we won that. Then Tim and I went to work for -- this was 1980,
'81, '82. Then Tim and I went to work for Dr. Wilson Riles.
-
COLLINGS
- Let me get -- let me put another tape in here. [END OF AUDIO FILE]
1.4. Session 3 ( December 5, 2005)
-
WILSON
- -- you're out. And -- but Riles took a liking to me because I used to
feed him lines and phrases on the issues that he can -- that he liked.
So he insisted that I travel with him everywhere he went as his press
secretary. So I became his personal press secretary, and I traveled all
over California, and to editorial board meetings and stuff like that,
and giving him lines to say. Unfortunately, he lost the election, and he
never paid me my (laughter) last paycheck. I eventually forgave it --
forgave him that. But I learned a lot in that election, too. Now, let's
see -- that was 1982.
-
- Then...
-
COLLINGS
- So what made you want to jump back into the world of issues?
-
WILSON
- The world of business.
-
COLLINGS
- The world of business just kind of soured you, and probably being fired
while you were out sick...?
-
WILSON
- Well...you know, as you get more into what I would call an "inner life"
-- and this isn't an especially -- an especial yoga thing; people do it
spontaneously without yoga. They -- you know, you start to put two and
together -- I mean, if you're smart -- after a while, and you understand
what are the dynamics of this, and what are the dynamics of that, and so
forth. And at that time, it wasn't hard for me to articulate the idea
that I wasn't cut out for the corporate culture that much.
-
- Now, I'm going to --
-
COLLINGS
- (inaudible) especially the corporate culture of the Eighties we're
talking about now, right?
-
WILSON
- Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was the merger/acquisition age. But I did go into
it, and I'll tell you about that in a minute.
-
- But first, a guy who had a directory company in Arcadia -- Clark
Directory Systems -- there came a -- the phone company -- they -- there
was a bill before the PUC [Public Utilities Commission] to open up the
directories to anybody who wanted to publish a directory. Well, this is
stupid, you know? Because it means that the consumer then -- if he wants
to cover the market to really cover themselves -- has to buy more ads in
more directories. And the directories aren't all that necessary; neither
are they all that good. And most people stick with the phone company
directory. But he (inaudible) establish an alternative directory. So he
hired me to be a lobbyist in Sacramento on this issue.
-
- And so the first thing I did was stage a media event out in Arcadia. The
phone company showed up. (laughter) We had a whole bunch of people
saying -- you know, I mean, I had leading citizens say we don't need
this and that, and duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh, and it's a bad bill for
business. That was my articulation issue -- and it was. It was a bad
bill for business. And then I went up to Sacramento, where it was really
being fought, and I went around to see everybody -- all the politicians
I knew, and all the politicians I didn't know. And what it came down to
was during the hearing, before we -- he went into the hearing,
[Assemblyman] Doug Bosco from Eureka was talking to the phone company
guys, and so they went through the -- and we couldn't get to the point
where they were talking, because it was off-limits to me, but it was OK
for the phone company lobbyists, you know? And I'm running up and down
the stairs and chasing everybody all around and everything.
-
- And I forget the guy who was the head of the committee, but he was a
long-term Democrat, and -- you see, it doesn't make any difference,
Democrat/Republicans, in the long run -- although it may in some areas.
But they took a vote, and the vote was three to three. And that would've
won it for us, and he's got his gavel, and he's saying, "OK. The vote is
three to three. Does anybody want to change their vote?" (laughter)
"Does anybody want to change their vote?" Finally Doug Bosco, you know,
who was the great liberal Democrat: "I'm changing my vote." You know?
Because the deal was -- as I found out later -- was that he would vote
on my side if it didn't come down to him being the deciding vote. But if
it came down to the deciding vote -- you know, he was bought off -- he
would vote for the phone company. Well, he did. Crushed. I was crushed.
I went home, and I got pneumonia. (laughter) And that was an experience
in itself. And that was in 1979.
-
- Now, after the elections I worked with Jim [Clark], I go to work for this
guy who hired me as a lobbyist as a salesman. I didn't have anywhere
else to go. And I was damn good at it. But then I applied for a job as
advertising -- director of advertising at Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays.
Now, this involved a lot of things for me: I loved the travel business;
I love to travel; I love being the head of an advertising -- house
advertising agency. And out of 596 applications, I got the job. So I
embarked then on five years of the most miserable five years I ever got,
working for Ed Hogan and his artist wife, Lynn [Hogan], who ran the mom
& pop -- we had a love/hate relationship. He loved it because I
could do so many things, but he hated it because people liked me. When I
got there, I instituted a company picnic; I instituted company theater
parties. And then his wife wrote me a three-page memo of how I was a bad
manager because all I wanted to do was have people like me. (laughter)
And you see, everybody liked me, and more people liked me than they
liked Ed Hogan, so that was the -- that was the problem right there.
-
- So I was dealing with a mom & pop, big-time operation. They hired
two vice presidents over me, and fired both vice presidents, because
they couldn't do what I could do. And I even ended up getting a
five-year pin. Now, they finally hire another vice president over me,
and his orders are to get me to walk. And they take away my parking
place, they give me a small office and everything, and they were
monitoring my phone calls. I didn't find this out till later. I was in
touch with a lawyer, and the lawyer said, "Well, when you're fired, call
me -- it's worth about 60 grand." (laughter)
-
- So one night, I took out for drinks -- although I don't drink, I took
(inaudible) out -- the vice president, and I said, "Greg, I don't know
how you look at yourself in the mirror when you wake up in the morning,
but I want you to know one thing: I'm not walking. You're going to have
to fire me." And he says, "Well, you're already fired. We're just trying
to figure out what to do with you." And I said, "Oh. OK." So I went in
the next morning right to Human Services, and I said, "I understand that
I have been fired. I would like a letter of termination on my desk by 12
noon." The wires went back and forth -- (laughter) this was so funny --
and -- oh! The reason was -- is because he got a new CEO, and the new
CEO -- who was a pistol -- came in and started barking orders one day,
and I was trying to take down the prices he wanted me to advertise in
different cities, and I said, "Excuse me, Frank -- I didn't get that
last price." And he said, "Well, if you cleaned your ears, you'd rather
-- you would be able to hear better." And I said, "Jesus Christ, Frank,
we don't need that kind of talk around here!" And of course, he was the
-- of the school you don't get mad, (laughter) you get even. And
"getting even" was they went -- they hired a vice president over me and
told him to get me to walk. So...
-
- So after I asked for my letter of inter- termination, they call me into a
meeting at two in the afternoon, and they said, "Burt, we've been
thinking this over, (laughter) and we've been thinking of hiring you
under a personal contract to do our videos and audio presentations for a
year at $60,000 a year." And they said, "How much are you making, Burt?"
And I said, "Well" -- I was making $50,000, plus I get a $500 car
allowance. And the new vice president said, "You what?!" (laughter) And
I said, "Didn't you negotiate the same thing, Greg?" (laughter) And so I
ended up in my own business, my own video production business at $5,000
a month so I wouldn't sue them, because they had heard my conversations.
And do you know, a year later Greg called me up from Seattle and
apologized? Also, the woman who owned the ad agency in New York called
me up from Florida, where she had retired -- sent me a letter
apologizing. Two people have apologized to me. And in Watts, after the
whole thing was over, I got a call from Curtis Gassoway (sp?), who was
on the committee, and he said, "Burt, we want to come over to see you on
Sunday." This was a year after Watts. And I said, "Why?" He says, "Well,
we want to apologize." But they never came over. (laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- And what did they want to apologize for?
-
WILSON
- For the way I was treated when I was attacked in the meeting, you see?
Because see, here's what -- let me go back to that for a minute. Here's
what they did: the smart people in Watts hung onto their houses when the
eminent domain process was going on, and they held out for a lot of
money. So the city just gave them more money for their property, and in
effect bought them off, you see? And that's why their interest was not
in what I and the women of Watts -- because all the mothers were on my
side -- were trying to do with single-family housing. They just wanted
money for their house. And neither did they want to get involved in
politics or things like that, because -- so they wanted to apologize to
me (laughter) for that.
-
- So let me see... I went from Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays and I moved to
Simi Valley. I became a producer of cable television commercials until
1998, when some people who were my guru's disciples back where he had
had his ashram near Binghamton, and -- asked me to come back there and
teach. By that time, I had become a member of the board of Manly Hall's
Philosophical and Research Society on Los Feliz Boulevard, and I took
over some of his speaking engagements. And I became a teacher/lecturer
there for two years. Then I went back east and things got boring, so I
joined Citizen Action and got involved in local issues. And they took
advantage of my strategy (laughter) and theater concepts. They were all
for it. They were all wonderful. And then, since -- because I was living
on Social Security and everybody there was afraid of the local state
senator, they asked me to lead the charge against his selling sportswear
out of the office, his office. And so I did, and I went on the radio and
television and everything, and became his worst nightmare. And
eventually, he backed down and stopped. And the editorials in the
papers, you know, never mentioned me at all.
-
- But the thing that -- about that incident that I really liked was the
local talk radio station asked me in to debate the issue with one of
their people, and they said, "Oh, by the way, Libous" -- which was the
senator, [Tom] Libous -- "might be in later to join the debate." Well,
"later," hell! He had a previous engagement, but they wanted to stage a
debate between Libous and myself. And I'm sure Libous had asked for it,
because he owned that whole city. Anybody who wanted to get anywhere had
to be a Republican, and they had to vote for Libous, and they had to --
you know, it was all... And that's the way it'll be until he dies,
because there's nothing like upstate New York politics -- whew!
-
- So I get there, and another guy tries to articulate that side, and Libous
gets there, and he walks in, "Here I am, the senator, and who the hell
are you doing this?" and everything, and... And he starts articulating
his issue, and I'm articulating right back at -- you know, and standing
up every sentence to him and everything. And he says -- and he finally
came down to, "Well, you know, and this was what I'm trying to do, and
here you are sitting over there smirking at me," you know? So I look at
the host of the program and I said, "Roger, am I smirking?" (laughter)
And he said, "No, you look very composed to me." (laughter) So I had
him! You know? (laughter) And everybody commented on that the next day,
you know? Because from then on, it was downhill for him the whole way.
Oh god, that was funny!
-
- And then I came back to Sacramento, my hometown, when I got a call from
an ex-girlfriend that her son's video center lost its manager, and would
I come back and manage it? So I did for a year, and then I arranged -- I
rearranged the whole thing with new managers and everything, and said,
"Look, Gary -- I don't want to work." (laughter) "I don't want to be in
this kind of environment. Keep me on, and let me do video editing and
telecine work," which is putting home movies on DVD, and... So that's
what I do. I'm in my own business inside that business. And in the
meantime, I revived my jazz band, the Silver Dollar jazz band, and we
became quite well known in northern California. And I'm writing another
book now. I'm expanding on this book here, because I keep learning
things, and it's tough to articulate an abstract god, which is why
(laughter) major religions all, you know, have an anthropomophic god for
everybody to (laughter) worship. So I have a weekly television program
called Ancient Wisdom for the 21st Century, and I talk about this on
that program, and I have a seminar every Thursday, and I work every day,
and...I spend the weekends with Carol. (laughter)
-
- So that brings you up to date. I've probably missed a lot of stuff. If I
could go through this, I'd probably remember a lot of stuff, but
basically that's it.
-
COLLINGS
- (inaudible)
-
WILSON
- The Sacramento Bee editorial, January 7th, nineteen-sixty...the
Sacramento Bee editorial, January 7th, 1976. The headline is, "The
Consumers Win One," and it talks about -- "Consumers have won a major
round in the Federal Power Commission decision halting the practice
under which customers were expected to put up free capital financing
future natural gas supplies from Alaska." Well, there you go. It doesn't
mention CAUSE at all, and when it comes to...Ross, the Public Utilities
commissioner: "Now Ross says he will urge the PUC to endorse the federal
decision and call upon the utilities to renegotiate their contracts with
the oil companies." He was the one who was for it, you know? And now
like he's trying to be the consumer champion -- Leonard Ross, that's it.
"Leonard Ross, the young and vigorous new member who led PUC opposition
to the advance payments" -- baloney! "Gimmick (sp?) says the FPA order
will mean a savings of $1 billion to gas users throughout California" --
yeah, that was the money they were going to collect! That was the
savings, but we saved...
-
- Now, this is an indication of how important it was. Conrad --
-
COLLINGS
- (inaudible) victory celebration (inaudible)
-
WILSON
- -- Conrad did a...I mean, he --
-
COLLINGS
- [Paul] Conrad the political cartoonist [of the Los Angeles Times]?
-
WILSON
- -- he did -- yeah, he did what the editorial writers couldn't bring
themselves to do on that thing.
-
COLLINGS
- And what's the date on that? Does it say?
-
WILSON
- January 24th -- and that's my birthday.
-
COLLINGS
- (inaudible) January 24th, 1976, from the L.A. Times (inaudible).
-
WILSON
- That's when we ended our boycott, we canceled -- "Burt Wilson Call to
Action" -- by the -- "A Victory for the Consumer" -- see? "The PUC
Wednesday rescinded its earlier...the gas companies... CAUSE has been
the principal public group in California to muster support against the
advance public payments. Wilson said the boycott eventually resulted in
more than 1,000 natural gas users sending their gas bills to the PUC in
protest over the surcharge. 'Why did the FPC do that?' asked Wilson.
'It's because the people were withholding their bills, and that brought
nationwide attention to the ARCO deal. The publicity made it almost
impossible to keep the impact of these deals secret any longer. The PUC
passed the buck on this issue to the federal government'." That's what
happened! I remember now. "'The PUC made a mistake, and they've been
trying to get out of it without saying they were wrong'." Exactly!
"Wilson said the PUC reversal of its decision was a result of the
consumer boycott. Wilson said the group is considering leading an
initiative to have the PUC members elected" -- oh, that was another
thing. "And mounting public sentiment against a proposal now before
Congress to deregulate the price of natural gas, a move Wilson termed
'inflationary'." Sure, if you deregulate it. Then it becomes a free
market issue.
-
- This was our -- this was my op-ed piece on making public utilities --
-
COLLINGS
- What's the date on that?
-
WILSON
- -- truly public.
-
COLLINGS
- The -- it's the Los Angeles Times?
-
WILSON
- August 6th, 1978. This was where we wanted a...to have the utilities all
be municipal utilities. No profit -- get the investor --
-
COLLINGS
- That was the --
-
WILSON
- -- profit out of the utilities.
-
COLLINGS
- -- the Public Utilities thing?
-
WILSON
- Yeah.
-
COLLINGS
- The thing that you didn't want (inaudible)?
-
WILSON
- Yeah. Exactly, exactly. Tim, by the way -- one Sunday, there were three
really good letters in the Times about the boycott and about ARCO. Tim
wrote all three of them. (laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- Letters to the editor?
-
WILSON
- (laughter) He just put in somebody's name, you know? (laughter)
-
- Now, here's what I was arguing in that case against... "At a news
conference Monday" -- the date on this is May 9th, 1978 --
-
COLLINGS
- And that's from the L.A. Times also?
-
WILSON
- Yeah. "...Wilson said, 'A recent report from the Finance Division Tax
Unit of the Public Utilities Commission revealed that from 1974 to 1976,
non-regulated affiliates in the Pacific Lighting Group incurred losses
of $109 million, half of which were offset by tax subsidies from
southern California ratepayers." And you see, this is where I was
talking about mingling their assets. They were able to mingle the assets
from their losses and regain those losses through raising the rates,
which is -- what a game! (laughter) What a game! They can get money to
pay for your losses!
-
- Oh, here's one thing --
-
COLLINGS
- This was a CAUSE press release? Right?
-
WILSON
- What?
-
COLLINGS
- This was a CAUSE press release that you're reading from right now?
-
WILSON
- This is the death -- this is the Eula Love. Now, what happened here was
the police came out to a woman who hadn't paid her gas bill. And we all
thought -- you know? And what she did was she had a knife in her hand,
and she raised it, and the police shot her eight times.
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COLLINGS
- Whoa!
-
WILSON
- Yes. So we filed a complaint about that, and "...a public interest group"
-- that's us -- "an attempt to establish safeguards against
confrontations over unpaid utility bills such as the recent one: Mrs.
Eula Love, who was shot by police called to her home in a dispute over
an unpaid bill." And I said, "'We are not trying to place blame, but we
want to try to formulate policies that will prevent such tragedies from
occurring again,' Wilson said. CAUSE in the past" has done this and
this. So what she was -- what we feel that she was doing was protecting
her family, you know? And maybe there were other issues involved. But
the point is, she didn't deserve to be shot eight times. You see? And I
forget what the final resolution of this was. They never prosecuted the
officers. But I think we might have gotten at least a bone thrown to us
by a rewriting of policy on confrontations between the police and people
who don't pay their utility bills, because what a threat that is to a
person's family -- you know, somebody coming out and turning off your
gas like that. These are the things that keep you coming back, because
--
-
COLLINGS
- The police were called because the utility guy called them, because she
wouldn't --
-
WILSON
- Yeah.
-
COLLINGS
- -- (inaudible) turn off the gas?
-
WILSON
- Exactly. I think she attacked him with a shovel. (laughter) I mean, she
came after him with a shovel. But I mean, any policeman is able to
disarm a knife-wielding, matronly woman. But they felt their lives were
threatened, so they shot her eight times.
-
- The ARCO shark was -- everybody loved that. (laughter)
-
COLLINGS
- The shark was (inaudible)
-
WILSON
- Yeah.(break in audio)
-
- [END OF AUDIO FILE]