John Haag - Carol Fondiller


By Carol Fondiller

If I believed in ghosts or revenants or communicating with the dead, I would summon up John’s spirit with candles, vodka, fine red wine, potato chips and some ultra spicy weed. Maybe I’ll do that anyway leaving out the candles for safety’s sake.


And John would sit there his pale skin just a whiter shade of pale. His hair to his shoulders, curled. John had the features of Alexander Hamilton or Thomas Paine, sharply carved delicate features. They would not have looked out of place carved in marble and he would tell me what happened and I would not depend on my ego-centric memory. I met John after a raid on a poster shop in the late 60’s. I was furious at the injustice and brutality of the raid. At that time, John, along with his wife Anna, was running the Venice West, a Coffee House in the real eighteenth century conception of a Coffee House, a space where poets and mere people came together and argued discussed and sat at tables over cups of coffee into the dawn.

I didn’t know then, that these were the hours that John kept for most of the time I knew him.
John was an aristocrat and an anarchist.

He truly believed in Self-Government and self-determination. I’m at a stage in my life that when I mention Jeanne Craine, Tyrone Power, or Huey Newton, H. Rap Brown or Abbie Hoffman, I receive blank stares of who? Who was John Haag? Why do all these old people remember John Haag?

In a way John Haag might be characterized as the George Washington of Venice. Abbot Kinney developed and conceived Venice, Los Angeles colonized Venice. And John Haag fathered the concept of Free Venice—self-determination of community.

It was a time. In the late 60’s to mid 70’s you would have found me sitting on a bench on the Ocean Front Walk, yes there were amenities for people who just wanted to sit. Not shop pay or play for money or stardom, just places for people to SIT, to look at the people or the ocean, to rest….to re-create themselves—to recreate. You would have seen me truckin’ down the ‘Front going to work or a meeting, a party. I would be idle on the ‘Front, sitting on one of those benches with my friends. We would look at one another, as we sat and smoked that evil weed, tobacco, and looked at the people walking by, exchanging greetings and insults with our acquaintances, the sun shining a slight breeze riffling the gauzy granny/Indian dresses of the women floating by, and we’d discuss politics—and then we’d stop and look at one another and say, “These ARE the good ol’ days” and we’d clutch that moment of the blue ocean melting into the horizon of the cloudless blue sky, the gauzy floating women the epiphanies on those now vanished benches—we’d clutch that mini moment and remember every vivid hue and scent….We’d be at City Hall protesting the urban renewal—the Master Plan of Los Angeles—protesting the war in Vietnam. It was, as Todd Gitlin (another famous name from the past guaranteed to get a rise of “Who?” from those under 50) said, in a recent speech—the “sixties were a larkier time” than the 21st Century.

Now John, to my knowledge, for all of his care about the Ocean Front Walk, never spent what free time he had on the Ocean Front Walk or the beach. He would occasionally table the Ocean Front Walk and be threatened with arrest by the L.A.P.D. Sometimes he’d head a rally on O.F.W. I’ll bet there are few people left on this earth, if any, who ever saw John lying on a blanket on the sand getting some rays in those pre-ozone hole days. What a wonderful time! All sun and cheap rent. Important causes combined with a gerbil’s concept of unintended consequences. John’s skin was pale translucent his features sharply carved—but I’ve talked about his looks.

I did not know what he did before he came to Venice. In those days, some came to divest themselves of what they were—to un-invent to uncoil. People never asked what you did or where you came from before you landed at the edge of the continent looking for the mirror of oneself. John came into my life when I began seeing pamphlets and posters, courtesy of the City of Los Angeles and the Venice Chamber of Commerce touting the virtues of the Master plan, lighting, street repairs, canal restoration—along with less crime. After witnessing several arrests by the Imported Notorious Metro Squad of the L.A. Police Dept., I went to a meeting held in a house on the Ocean Front Walk.

The place was jammed with all kinds colours and classes of people.

All sorts of people complained of being mistreated by the Police.

Then a man clad in black turtle neck and black jeans got this vociferous diverse crowd to focus on what was happening, and how to achieve fairness at the hand of he justice system.

I recognized this man as John Haag, proprietor of the Venice West, and organizer of a debate regarding censorship, the U.S. Post Office, D. H. Lawrence and Lawrence Ferlenghetti and the right to shout FUCK in a crowded room. The previous phrase could not have been printed or shouted in the 50’s—even if that room was the Venice West. The V.W. was always threatened with being shut down, because they had Poetry Readings and live performances were prohibited. At least that was the excuse given.
At future meetings of the group, we became a Committee—the Venice Survival Committee.

Then John Haag and others initiated the Peace and Freedom Party. An alternative to the two Parties: Tweedle dum and Tweedle dummer. John connected the dots between racism, poverty, powerlessness, anomie, war and crime—or rather in some mystical Socratean way enabled some of us to piece it out. He would ask why when someone would state accepted wisdom. What do you mean where the freeway will go through Venice—why should a freeway go through Venice at all, separating the then predominantly black working class middle class community of Oakwood from the Ocean Front Walk and the Canals?

He spoke up to City officials and bureaucrats as if they were people such as you and I. He was autocratic and haughty about the way things should be done, but he was thorough in finding out what were the things that needed to get done and reach consensus. We learned that the crackdown on crime and drugs—that is, rousting people who looked “suspicious,” i.e., berets beards bells braids an illegal smile, arresting people, then dismissing the charges but costing the arrestee loss of wages and time, and grief.

People were harassed because they spoke out against the collusion between speculators and various city agencies to get rid of low-income people whether they were pensioners who owned their little beach cottages or renters who rented one room from a low-income (yes they existed) home owner. The plan was, The Master Plan, was to make Venice a Miami Beach West.

One night after meetings of the Venice Survival Committee, the Free Venice Committee, and the Peace and Freedom Party, some of us stayed behind at the P&F headquarters on West Washington Boulevard, now known as Abbot Kinney Boulevard. We sat in the back room where John lived, and we, or rather John, who had been thinking about the lack of objective coverage in the press or on T.V.—remember, no e-mail or Internet Googles in the 60’s—suggested we put out a paper sponsored by, at that time, the Peace and Freedom Party. A community paper a paper not owned by anyone, but a place where opinions and analysis and news not covered in the Establishment media could appear. A place where people who had no voice could find their Voice, and not only write their voice but have it read by people outside the group. The paper, named by John Haag, was called the Free Venice Beachhead.

There were arguments discussions fulminations and poems printed in that paper. They came from the community. And again an old cliché was retired. Yes, people had voices. John did not speak for the voiceless. The people had voices, the powers that be just didn’t listen until John taught us how to yell.

And God Damn! We had fun! Can I tell you the clever things John said? No, yuh hadda been there.
John had this core of common sense, that in the middle of every crazy wish or dream, he would say, why not?

Venice secede from Los Angeles? Why not? Well, that didn’t happen, but we started the Venice Town Council immediately co-opted by Pat Russell, but taken back by us rip snortin’ commie pinkos who had the audacity to claim that renters were part of the community, as were low-income people.

If we did not defeat the Master Plan for evacuating the poor, (it has reappeared, but in bits and pieces all over the City), we held it off for enough years so that there’s still something of a community left to fight for.
John Haag, by example, taught us to act locally, and think globally.

People educated people as to the consequences of what we called the Master’s Plan. Venice would no longer be a community where one could live cheap, succeed or fail, but always have a home. We would be moved out shoved out arrested out.

The Vietnam War or the Peoples Republic of China did not enter into discussion while people were signing petitions against Police Brutality and rapacious landlords and speaking out against the banks’ hostile attitudes towards low-income homeowners.

That didn’t mean John didn’t care passionately about the rest of the world and in particular what the effect of U.S. policy had on the rest of the world. But he didn’t believe in lecturing or yelling at people to convince them. He just did what he did, explained what he did and why, and by gummy, some people would come to agree with him, or at least respect him for having cogent reasons for his beliefs and actions. He never became “more Mao than thou” in his efforts. He did not see himself as morally superior.
He made revolution, change fun. There was no need to dress in Mao suits or frown at musicals.

You could write poetry about love and nonsense and still change the world. Because isn’t that why we wanted the world changed? To have fun? Some people disagreed, and set up cells and called for armed revolt. John was a pacifist and a man of good sense who pointed out that the gov’t had most of the ammunition.

But John was always gracious and respectful and he believed in having fun while building a world where everyone could have fun.

I miss you John.

Posted: Mon - May 1, 2006 at 09:35 PM          

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