Randy Rowland

        October 12, 1968 was going to be the first big GI and Veterans’ March for Peace in the San Francisco Bay area.  And so, like the “Nine for Peace,” some of us who were AWOL were going to turn ourselves in, in conjunction with the march.  On the 11th there was an article in the paper that said a prisoner at the Presidio stockade had been shotgunned and killed.  Nobody on the outside knew what was going on, so my assignment was to go into the stockade, find out what’s going on and get the message out.     

        ​​The first thing I did is try and find Keith Mather.  I found out that they had in fact shotgunned this guy Richard Bunch.  Keith and I and Walter Pawlowski and a few others said we got to do something.  You’re talking about some tough, quality people here.  I think I was the only guy that had graduated from high school.  They were working class and it was the very thing that made the GI movement in that period unusual and really dangerous I think to the establishment; that these weren’t the educated kids, these weren’t the kids sitting around intellectually singing hootenanny songs.  These were guys who were disenfranchised and oppressed and they were taking it up.  That’s what made the GI movement such a threat.  

​​        Saturday night we had a meeting in the cellblock, which was then taken to other cellblocks.  We were going to sit down, refuse to get up and we were going to sing.  The black GIs decided they weren’t going to do it because they figured they were the only ones who’d get punished.  It wasn’t clear who else was going to do it and who wasn’t … I guess it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t do it.  Every morning they had a formation and did roll call, because as prisoners they count you all the time.  So on roll call formation, some of us broke ranks and walked over there.  The brass started freaking out instantly.  We sat down, linked arms and started singing.  The main song was “We Shall Overcome.”  In the very act of breaking ranks and going to do it we said, fuck it, we don’t care what happens, we’re just going to do it.  It was an elation, like an energy, people were up.  We didn’t give a shit what they did.  The commandant came over and tried to read the mutiny article to us.   We just sang louder whenever he tried to talk.  We were not going to be intimidated, even though it’s a capital offense.  

        ​We had agreed that one person was going to stand up and read our demands, and that person was Walter Pawlowski, who was very popular among the guys.  He read the list of our demands, and asked for a response.  It was all polite … “May I have your response sir?”  And of course they didn’t have any response.  So we just kept singing and pretty soon up comes the fire truck.  The firemen get out and they’re standing around.   We didn’t know it at the time, but later we found out they told the firemen to squirt us, and the firemen said no, we fight fires, we don’t do this shit.  All we knew is the fire trucks were there, but we didn’t get squirted.  The camera guys were running around taking pictures for evidence, but instead of trying to hide we’d grin for them.  

​​        Then they brought in this company of MPs, with their riot stuff on, their gas masks and their big sticks.  We just kept singing.  Pretty soon the MPs came over and started grabbing people.  They stuck us all together in one cellblock, which was great and made it easier to build unity, and charged us with mutiny.  The Presidio 27 became an organized force then, we bonded together in a big way.  We were steadfast, we never wavered.  Never once did anybody apologize or say I wish I hadn’t done it.