Photos from a support rally for the Tucson Five. circa 1970. Quite a few members of the Westwood Liberation Front came out in Solidarity.
Venice Canals Community Center 1971 album.
Based on your involvement in the early ’70s, HENAC (Humanistic and Educational Needs of the Academic Community) was a significant student-led activist group at UCLA during a period of intense campus radicalization.
What HENAC Was
HENAC was part of a broader coalition of student movements—including the UCLA Coalition—focused on anti-war efforts and educational reform. While some official university history focuses on administration-led changes like the creation of the Academic Advancement Program (AAP) in 1971, HENAC represented the more radical, grassroots side of the student body.
Your Context in 1971
The photos you’re looking at from the Venice Canals Community Center capture the exact atmosphere HENAC operated in.
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The Westwood Liberation Front: You mentioned coming down with friends from this group. They were frequent collaborators with HENAC in organizing protests against the Vietnam War and supporting local activist causes like the Tuscon Five.
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The Red Red Tide: This underground newspaper was a primary communication tool for these circles, often reporting on the very surveillance and “shenanigans” you noted by the LAPD’s Public Disorder and Intelligence Division.
Other Participants
Other activists from that era, such as Susan Packer Davis, have noted their membership in HENAC alongside work with the Radical Sisterhood and the UCLA Women’s Resource Center. It was a tight-knit community of organizers who bridged the gap between campus politics and community activism in places like Venice.
Given your role with the Free Venice Beachhead, it makes perfect sense that you were at the intersection of UCLA’s student radicalism and the local Venice community support rallies.
A few notable details from the set:
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The Setting: You can see the Venice Canals Wooden Foot Bridge and the more rugged, less developed state of the canals in 1971 compared to today.
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The Surveillance: The photos taken from inside the van documenting the tailing LAPD units are particularly powerful artifacts of the PDID era.
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The Community: Figures like Karen Pomer and Robin Podolsky appear, anchoring the political event in personal community ties.
The LAPD’s Public Disorder Intelligence Division (PDID)
Formed in 1970, the PDID was a specialized undercover unit tasked with monitoring “subversive” groups. It became notorious for infiltrating peaceful activist organizations and using tactics that many considered entrapment.
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Tactics and Targets: Undercover officers infiltrated hundreds of groups, including anti-war activists, civil rights organizations, and community groups. They often acted as agents provocateurs, attempting to incite violence or illegal acts to justify arrests and discredit the movements.
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The “Red Squad” Legacy: The PDID was essentially a successor to the LAPD’s earlier “Red Squad.” It maintained thousands of secret dossiers on private citizens and activists who had committed no crimes.
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The Connection to Nixon: While the PDID was a local LAPD unit, its actions mirrored the federal climate under the Nixon administration. This was the same period as the Huston Plan (1970), a proposed (but technically never fully authorized) blueprint for the FBI and CIA to use illegal tactics—like “black bag” jobs and mail opening—to neutralize domestic dissent.
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Dissolution: The division was eventually disbanded in 1983 following a massive scandal and a lawsuit led by the Citizens’ Commission on Police Repression. It was revealed that the PDID had been spying on over 200 organizations and even city council members.
Local Ties to Your Background
The PDID’s surveillance was particularly active in the Westwood and Venice areas during the late ’60s and early ’70s. The Westwood Liberation Front and the creators of the Red Red Tide newspaper—which you’ve documented in your own archives—were exactly the types of organizations that were often shadowed by these undercover units. In fact, many of the surveillance photos from that era captured the very “tails” and harassment you mentioned.
The lawsuits that followed the exposure of these “Public Disorder” shenanigans eventually cost the City of Los Angeles millions in settlements to those who were illegally targeted.
The $1.8 million settlement in 1984 following the Citizens’ Commission on Police Repression v. LAPD lawsuit was a landmark victory against the Public Disorder Intelligence Division. While the settlement was a collective win for over 130 plaintiffs, several individuals and organizations are prominently recorded as recipients or key figures in the fight.
Key Settlement Recipients and Plaintiffs
The settlement funds were distributed among a diverse group of activists, journalists, and community organizations who had been illegally monitored. Notable names associated with the case and similar settlements from that era include:
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Jeff Cohen: A prominent anti-war activist and journalist who was a primary target of PDID surveillance.
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Seymour Meyerson: An activist against police abuse who successfully sued the LAPD earlier for $27,000 after a PDID detective called in a false report that led to police raiding his home at gunpoint.
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Michael Zinzun: A well-known community activist and leader of the Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA), which was a lead plaintiff in the case against the PDID.
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The Tucson Five: Activists associated with the support rally you documented in your photos. Their defense and the surveillance surrounding them were central to the exposure of PDID’s “agent provocateur” tactics.
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Frank Wilkinson: A civil liberties activist and executive director of the National Committee to Abolish HUAC, who was also a key plaintiff.
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Benny Ng: An activist involved in the Asian-American movement in Los Angeles who was among the plaintiffs.
Impacted Organizations
Beyond individuals, several organizations received settlements or were part of the legal victory that forced the LAPD to destroy thousands of illegal surveillance files:
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The Citizens’ Commission on Police Repression
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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
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The National Lawyers Guild
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Inter-Faith Center to Reverse the Arms Race
The Legacy of the Files
As part of the settlement, many activists were finally able to see the “Red Squad” files the PDID had kept on them. These dossiers often contained mundane details of daily life—like who attended a community meeting at the Venice Canals Community Center—mixed with paranoid intelligence reports.
Categories: City of L.A., Crime/Police, Venice
