Steel Notes Magazine
July & August 2016
• Oct 8-11 - The Weatherman “Days of Rage”
• Oct 15 - Peace Day. 500,000 protesters nationwide. First Vietnam Moratorium (which I was at with my black
arm band and we blocked the streets and stopped traffic)
• Oct 21 - Jack Kerouac, beat author of “On the
Road” dies.
• Oct 30 - Supreme Court orders desegregation
nationwide
• Nov 15 - 500,000 + march in Washington DC for
peace. Largest antiwar rally in U.S. history. Speakers: McCarthy, McGovern, Coretta King, Dick
Gregory, Leonard Bernstein. Singers: Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul, & Mary, John Denver,
Mitch Miller, touring cast of Hair 1969
• Nov 17 - First round of SALT talks in Helsinki
• November 18 - Deputy District Attorney Vincent
T. Bugliosi is assigned Manson case.
• Nov 20 - 78 American Indians seize Alcatraz Island
and demand its return
• Nov 20 - DDT use banned in residential areas
• Nov 24 - Lt. William Calley charged with murdering 102 South Vietnamese civilians at My Lai
• Dec - Over 100,000 US troops dead or injured in
Vietnam.
• Dec 1 - First draft lottery since WWII held in NYC
• December 8 - Manson, Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel and Kasabian are indicted for the murders of
Sharon Tate and her friends. The grand jury also
indicts the five, plus Van Houten, for the LaBianca
murders.
• Dec 8 - Raid on Black Panther headquarters in LA
- four-hour shoot- out
• Dec 24 - Rolling Stones “Altamont” concert erupts
in violence, one spectator killed
I was 14 years old in 1969 when I first heard about
Charles Manson. What followed was not lost on my
young teenage mind, eyes, ears and understanding; at
the time the recurring question in my mind was “why ”, why would Charlie do this? Oh sure the absurd excuses
of starting a race war between blacks and whites, never ever had any ring of truth to me. Too crazy and infantile… stemming ONLY the military intelligence could come up with. I learned their stories were always coated and tainted with the absurd and simplicity of knowing that the story would have to be told to a majority of
people who were racist and simple minded and wanted to believe evil existed. Of course it was answered quickly
by the traitors that pretended to stand by him as they sold each him out for their 30 pieces of silver…first Susan
Atkins, and later Linda Kasabian. Things progressed that summer and autumn into the new year where most of
us were unaware that a human being, a man who under the law is innocent till proven guilty, was stripped of his
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