Quotes from Red -

How can the social system be improved? It's a crime to smoke marijuana, a plant, but poisoning millions of people through toxic wastes is business as usual. How much will you give for the lives of your children's children, which is yourself. How much are people willing to give up for air, earth, water, animals, and the coming generations? I think the answer to that is pretty clear.

Almost everything you eat or drink has water in it. No matter where it's from, most of it's polluted. Most of it's got a lot of chemicals that we have to stop producing, It's a simple thing. We don't transfer it. We don't move the poisons somewhere else. We stop producing them. We use our brains.

I want clean water. I want water I could take a newborn baby down to and... you're not interested in air and water and you're gonna need it! And as it disappears from the earth, if you don't do anything about it... if you do not participate in doing whatever you can to protect your mother, your nurturer that keeps you alive, you don't get life.

Rattlesnakes eat the animals that reproduce in quantity. They all have a purpose, so we need them. Since we don't know or understand the overall purpose of so many animals, it's to our advantage to let them enlighten us. Snakes serve to keep people from being unaware oafs (ln the wild). If not for the need to look out for dangers around us we'd all be blundering plundering pigs. If animals didn't have a survival instinct, many more would be food to a few who'd get fat, flounder and die. End of story. Finito. No more life. Women holler and bitch to the contrary but we all live in a matriarchy and have for many many years. Women's needs have been the reason for work, war, religion and death. When in balance with the needs of the soul or patriarch (father, God, spirit, universe) this works well because the women's role has always been to make sure the young survive. When out of balance it destroys life.

Keep talking about moving toxic wastes, but never let it cross your mind to quit producing them.
Keep judging yourselves in Manson. Don't look in the mirror.
You will serve the Earth as much as she serves you, or you will commit suicide.

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Q: In 1975, what was your reason for trying to assassinate President Ford?

I pleaded "NOT GUILTY" to the charge of "attempted assassination of a President". There were 4 bullets in the handle of the gun - none in the chamber. Had I wanted to use a bullet, I would've jacked back the slide til it cllcked and pushed it forward, injecting one into its chamber. I moved spontaneously, as anytime feeling or intuition its strong, and I didn't choose to load the weapon. So - the plea was true. If Manson had anything to do with it, it is this - He asked the women around him to put the Earth before him to work for air, trees, water, animals (he calls it ATWA). He told me long ago that life on Earth does not begin with humans, but with all that keeps us alive. He said the Earth and its animals can survive without people. People cannot survive without it. Such a simple thing. You may say that everyone knows it; but humans behave now as if they can eat money and drink gasoline and oil.

I had that and other pollutions on my mind when Ford flew into Sacramento for a big Business and Industry breakfast the following morning.

MIND BEYOND MADNESS

A version of this writing circa 1997 first appeared that same year in a website belonging to S. Good and G. Stimson along with photos of the embroidered vest that I am here describing. - Red

The vest began as two trees I wanted to keep, so I embroidered my memory of them onto patches of material. Later I was required to put these and other patches together to make of them a single “unfinished craft project,” as that was my only chance of retaining the work during the Bureau of Prisons’ big sweep to reduce inmates’ property. From there I embroidered directly onto the material for about ten years. Some of the result was formed by restriction. Thread colors ran out, one by one, and I was not only unable to buy more but could not let it be known that I possessed any.

The two trees needed water so the river was a must. It reminded me of the Greenbriar River in West Virginia where I went on my “vacation” in 1987. The roots of the trees grow down its banks, exposed by erosion during floods. The woman in the river represents both Air and Water, for the living things of each need the other, but there is another woman in a waterfall near the bottom of the vest. She and all her offspring are the result of the mating of sky and earth above her. So, of the four women she is Water, the other Air, another Trees, and the other Animals, all necessary for balance of the Earth. 
 

The woman of the Air points to the sky and to the spirit, which is breath, inspiration to expiration. In this mind is the face of Charlie — a shaman, seer, visionary — but Manson IS the mind, all that is, and all that is yet unimagined and unrealized. He wears all crowns from thorns to precious metals and gems, to cloth, beads, feathers, bone, sinew, and wisps of whispered spirit. 

The black birds are ravens, seen often in the desert, intelligent, believed by some cultures to be capable of transmitting spiritual messages. They fly toward a death head with a yin/yang or balance sign in from of its teeth. An iron cross and a reverse swastika, symbols of WWII, are in their wake and way.
 

The symbols made up of crosses, stars, triangles, and squares have been around forever. Interpretations would vary, and original inspirations directing the use of symbols would be cheapened by shallow phrases, but for the record: The swastika a.k.a. Fylfot, gamma cross, Croix cramponee and so on is found in early Sanskrit and has been interpreted as equivalent to “So be it” or “Amen.” Recorded 10,000 B.C. it has been found on artifacts and structures in Greece, Italy, India, Japan, China, Libya, Northern Europe, and the Americas. Interpretations of the meaning in the direction of its arms — masculine/feminine, war/peace, life/death, and various opposites — lend to a general notion of turns of behavior, rule and culture. The four arms have been used to signify the four directions, the four seasons, the four that add up to one. 
 

The “Runic Swastika” comes from Scandinavia, said to have signified recycling, regeneration, a return to Mother Earth, Mother Sea. There are variations of the cross — the Maltese and Latin being two — but if what I read is true, the cross did not become the primary symbol of Christianity until the ninth century A.D. I included some of these crosses along with many wheels and circles. 

The Islamic Moon and Star and the Jewish Star of David play large parts on the world stage. Together they hold much of the world hostage in fear and hope of another war. Charlie best expressed what I believe on this subject: “All land is Holy Land.” And “Religion is God’s biggest problem.” 
 

I the upper right back of the vest Charlie is sitting on a chessboard over dice and the nuclear symbol, playing his guitar. Here he is without a face. He sings, “I know a place behind your face.” A partial view of the world globe is near him. He sings, “We’ll never blow it up.” 
 

A wildcat in leaves, a scorpion in the night sky, these and many other creatures on both panels, were taken from tracings and drawings done my me and friends, inside prison and out. The front panel depicts scenes of California, San Francisco, the redwoods, the desert, and the Pacific Ocean. Palm trees and sun signify Los Angeles and Hollywood, but below these cities a pipe pours human wastes into the sea.