BB-29-bbb
MIKE PROKES – 10/2 – NO TAPE
Mike joined in November of 1972. He first attended a service at the SF church (we could not have been in there very long – it must have been only partly completed).
’74 Bomb incident. He does not know who found the bomb.
[Marginal note: “Overview”] His notion of an overview of the political and PR development of PT, with emphasis on the Bay Area. People go to churches, some of them, because important people go, it makes them feel important … and then they hang around. So, we would bring in speakers who were public figures. People felt good being a part of a group with such important friends. Jim felt that the more power you showed, the safer you were… the more you had. We started by representing ourselves as having a lot of support, and after a while it became legitimate because others thought we had it, and they gave their support. With good publicity it “snowballed” to a high late in 1976.
Our opposition (including those who went out) formed a coalition early. [San Francisco Mayor Joseph] Alioto got a slew of anti-PT letters in 1973. (Doesn’t know where he heard this – Carolyn L? [Marginal note: “CL [Carolyn Layton] doesn’t know.”] That is why we always had to buffer – because the opposition would write. He thinks it might have been organized by [David] Conn – but at any rate there was an organized anti-PT movement early in 1973.
The key events in the growth of the church in the Bay Area, in his opinion, were: 1) the rally at Glide Memorial – it got us Cecil, Willie Brown, Carlton Goodlett, Harvey Milk, and of course [George] Moscone’s attention. The elements were security (power), masses of people and wild acclaims (approval and popularity), and public figures with us (acceptance). Word got around from that point. 2) The night that Moscone came to PT as a candidate with Dorothy Cox, about 2 weeks before the election, he told us, in effect, “I’ve got the money but you have the people” and we agreed to work for him. In the next couple of days some of us that with his campaign manager – Willie Brown. Moscone won the election and many attributed the victory to us and Delancy [the Delancey Street Foundation], but the wheels knew it was us. We had become “kingmakers”. 3) The Testimonial Dinner: it was a tremendous display of power. Everyone was there; the Lt. Governor, Mayor, District Attorney, Sheriff, State Senators and Congressmen, Assemblymen, inc. Willie Brown, Guyana representative [handwritten notation: “Claude Worrell”], Cecil Williams, Harvey Milk (Gay Movement), etc.
The “national” meetings were never as good as LA/SF. The maximum crowd was about 700 once in Houston. He feels it was because JJ did not have a national name, and because we held meetings at night, but he feels it would have improved if we had continued and if JJ had stuck to religion.
In terms of population movement there were a series of “staged withdrawals” culminating in the move to Guyana. The first was the move from the Valley to SF which had started in 1975 as the Valley was no longer the center of activity, JJ was spending most of his time in SF, pay was better in SF. July 4, 1976 was the last mass meeting in the Valley. The move from LA to SF was on as of mid ‘76. It had two purposes, to increase our strength in the Bay Area, and to prepare people to go to Guyana. He developed the coming system on a large scale in SF at that point.