The Marine Stadium on Virginia Key once witnessed a crowd of young hippies raising their “Make Love Not War” signs in front of Allen Ginsberg, who was about to read his poems. It was the afternoon of December 22, 1969, and the recital was brief: amidst the verses of “Kral Majales,” the police turned off Ginsberg’s microphone for comparing the repression of the Miami Police Department to that of Prague.
Lawyer Tobias Simon took the case to court, arguing that Ginsberg’s right to freedom of expression had been violated. The ruling was in favor, and the recital was finally held in January (the next public appearance of Allen Ginsberg in Miami was in 1972, in Miami Beach, at the door of the Convention Center, protesting at the Republican Party Convention, and later at The Miami International Book Fair).
The counterculture movement of the 1960s brought forth ideas that changed our way of thinking. Many of them were spread through underground newspapers such as Los Angeles Free Press, The Berkeley Barb, and the East Village Other. These low-budget tabloids battled censorship and were collectives of artists, writers, and musicians in their twenties who, with a pop style far from the formalities and solemnities of mainstream press, carried messages against the Vietnam War, capitalism, and in favor of equal rights for African Americans and women, and supported the Cuban Revolution—though those that became politicized lost their luster. Charles Bukowski, Hunter Thompson, P.J. O’Rourke, Ginsberg, and many other now-famous names took their first steps with these outlets.
While San Francisco and New York were the strongholds of counterculture,
the movement also reached Miami, and the first underground pages were written in 1969, in the underground newspaper The Daily Planet, from Coconut Grove, Miami’s bohemian neighborhood. It was at the Grove also, around those years, where the Woodstock festival was conceived in a marijuana paraphernalia shop, and Jim Morrison was arrested on stage at the Dinner Key Auditorium in what would be the last great concert of The Doors.
Behind the editing and cultural management of The Daily Planet was Jerry Powers, a 22-year-old from New Jersey, music lover, columnist, and radio show host who invited Ginsberg to the poetry reading at the Marine Stadium, the afternoon of December 22nd, on Virginia Key where he was censored.
At that time, Miami was a conservative, right-wing state, and Powers faced repression not only on that occasion but on many others and even faced charges for distributing The Daily Planet on the streets of Coral Gables because its content was considered obscene. In addition to the Ginsberg event, Powers organized four more events at the Marina Stadium, hosted cult radio shows, and The Planet remained in circulation until 1974. Later, he moved with his family to New York, and years later, he returned to Miami with a different idea that led to his new publishing project: Ocean Drive Magazine.
