John Sinclair – Renegade Poet, Beatnik and Cultural Revolutionary

Immortalized by John Lennon’s 1972 song that bears his name, Sinclair is an iconic figure of ‘60s counterculture, famous for, among other things, having co-founded the anti-racist White Panther Party and for managing Detroit’s legendary proto-punk outfit MC5 early in its history. Following a highly publicized two-year stint in prison for marijuana possession (Lennon’s song was a protest against his incarceration), Sinclair has stuck to his guns as an advocate for marijuana reform. “Living Euro to Euro, sleeping on the couches and extra beds of friends, a man without a country and a post office box in New Orleans for a permanent address.” That's how spoken word poet John Sinclair describes…

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50th Anniversary Celebration of the John Sinclair Freedom Rally, Detroit, 10th December, 2021

Beatnik Youth Ambient by John Sinclair (Detroit, November 20, 2021)—Former Michigan marijuana prisoner John Sinclair, his family and friends will celebrate his release from Jackson Prison 50 years ago with an early evening party at the Ralston Holistic Healing Center at 19730 Ralston Street (near State Fair) from 6:00-10:00 pm on December 10, 2021, exactly 50 years after the John Sinclair Freedom Rally at Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor where John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Bobby Seale, Phil Ochs, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Seger, Commander Cody and a host of others gathered to speak, play and protest the imprisonment of their friend John Sinclair following a sentence in Detroit Recorder’s…

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50th Anniversary Celebration of the John Sinclair Freedom Rally to be held at Ralston Center in Detroit on 10th December, 2021

Beatnik Youth Ambient by John Sinclair (Detroit, November 20, 2021)—Former Michigan marijuana prisoner John Sinclair, his family and friends will celebrate his release from Jackson Prison 50 years ago with an early evening party at the Ralston Holistic Healing Center and Stonehouse Bar at 19730 Ralston Street (near State Fair) from 6:00-10:00 pm on December 10, 2021, exactly 50 years after the John Sinclair Freedom Rally at Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor where John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Bobby Seale, Phil Ochs, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Seger, Commander Cody and a host of others gathered to speak, play and protest the imprisonment of their friend John Sinclair following a sentence…

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John Sinclair – Time Line from 1941 to 2018. A Life’s work to date…..

1941-1959 Born October 2 at Women’s Hospital, Flint, Michigan Parents: John Sr. (Jack) and Elsie Sinclair Sister Kathleen born 1943, brother David born 1945 Attended Davison Public Schools, Davison, Michigan 1959 1959-1964 Attended Albion College, Albion, Michigan, 1959-61 Attended Flint Junior College, 1961 Attended University of Michigan-Flint College. 1962-64 Editor, The Word, UM–Flint President, UM—Flint Cinema Guild Graduated UM-Flint, January 1964, A.B. English Literature 1964-67 Attended Wayne State University, Detroit, Graduate School of English Master’s Thesis: William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch Convicted of Marijuana Possession, Detroit Recorders Court, Sentenced to two years probation Co-Founder & Director, Detroit Artists Workshop Founder & Director, Detroit LEMAR (Legalize Marijuana) Editor & Publisher, Artists Workshop Press…

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The Sun Ra Arkestra and John Sinclair – Barbican, London by Michael Horovitz, 4 June 2014

Detroit jazz poet John Sinclair, counterpointed by inventive British post-bop quartet The Founder Effect, whom he’d only just met, filled the first half hour of this marathon gig with echoes and premonitions of the Arkestra and of its visionary originator-captain Sun Ra, who died in 1993. Sinclair’s finale ‘Another Order of Being’ drew extensively on Ra’s pronouncements, notably that ‘A band can demonstrate unity among men more than anything else in the world’, and that ‘In some far place, many light years in space, where human feet have never trod! where human eyes have never seen! I’ll build a better kind of world’. Then on ambled a dozen amiable all-black Arkestrans,…

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