When I first met Michael Zin Zun, I was a white guy who had just been brutalized by the Pasadena Police. The ACLU was not interested. My City Councilman could not care less. Pasadena's then Mayor, Loretta Glickman, told me she couldnt help me because of her position. Loretta gave me Michael Zin Zun's phone number and told me to call him. She said he would help me. He did.

Mike didnt care that I was white. He didnt care that at the time I was a Republican. Being suddenly subjected to the Police beat down and the threat of prosecution for assaulting the Police officers who had beaten me, I didnt care that Michael was a Black Panther. Michael explained the complaint system to me. As I went through that system, Michael was there to give me advice, cheer me up, explain how the system had just violated its own rules, tell me jokes and fire up my spirit.

Over the years, no matter how much surelliance was conducted against him, no matter how many times the police broke into his home and office, no matter the number of false arrests or beatings he sustained, hope never seemed to leave Michael Zin Zun. I never really thought about the source of Michaels hope. We were each busy in our own arenas attempting to enforce Justice and Righteousness.

As I went to Mike's Funeral, I was depressed. It was that more than a brother, a true champion in the fight, had died. I was depressed because I had thought I had more time, I didnt need to share today,the Good News of redemption through Jesus Christ with Mike. There was time for that when we were old. Mike died before he was old.

I arrived at the funeral an hour early. The place was packed. I saw every local activist who was doing the work in the place. Dozens of people got up to speak and tell of the Michael Zin Zun they knew. Wave after wave of young man told how Mike encouraged them to learn, to get a trade, to stay out of trouble. Gang leaders told of a man who negotiated peace between the Bloods and the Crips. Family members told of Mike as a friend, a Uncle, a Dad and a believer in Jesus Christ from who his help came.

I was stunned. Black Panther, Marxist, Internationalist, do gooder, litigator against the Government,Fighter against Intitutionalized injustice, born again? I thought to myself, here this man believed in Jesus, but he had to go to Eldridge Cleaver to learn how to do the work of a Prophet. Most white church people I knew had no use at all for him, yet he was even their brother, who was doing the Greater Works of the Gospel. It was confusing, but exhilarating.

Black Panther for Jesus!! Black Panther in the name of Jesus! Revolutionary for Christ.....Yeah for the first time in a long time I was in a church service that squared up with who Jesus in Mathew, Mark, Luke and John was.

Michael fought hard. Like all activists he paid in personal ways that are immeasurable while waging each battle. The victories, while sweet, were bittersweet, because they were, compared to the ongoing injustice of our society, temporary, small, difficult to enforce, and fleeting. When Mike won millions of dolalrs from the County of Los Angeles because it did not use designated funds for youth hiring programs, he took nothing and made them spend the money for what it was designated for, hiring at risk youth. When he was beaten and injured, he won a great deal of money and took it, spending it taking minority kids to the beach, to the mountians, getting unwed Mothers cars, getting training for young men in careers, and expanding lives of young people by taking them to conferences around the world. At his funeral, the People of Haiti, of Brazil, and the ANC of South Africa draped his coffin with thier flags, he had helped them from Los Angeles a great deal in their struggles.

There were two Flags missing from Mike's coffin. Mike was a warrior in the best Christian tradition. Certianly the Christian flag belonged on his coffin along with that of the American flag, whose Constitutional form of government and highest ideals Michael Zin Zun spent his life fighting for. He was and remains, a true son of America, and a true Brother in Christ.

All Power to the People.

The Apostle and the Apostate

Long ago in Chicago, after the fire, America began to rebuild itself. There emerging out of the ashes of the ground were entire new systems of building, and the opportunity to by expression, birth an American Architecture, true to its People.

Many technologists grew up and contributed in Chicago. At the turn of the 19th to the 20th Century the two giants of American Architecture and Chicago were two firms: Burnham and Root, artistically headed by Daniel Burnham,and Adler and Sullivan, artistically headed by Louis Sullivan. At first there was little to differentiate these firms. They competed arduously for commissions, but their early works were very like each other. They each began by expressing in wide open glass areas the new steel construction and its long spans, each ornamented throughout with new details. Adler and Sullivan began to build more complex buildings, buildings with performance auditoriums, offices, retail and living spaces within them. Adler and Sullivan built their buildings each one as a individual whole artwork designed ,yes to meet the needs of financial return, but also to fulfill the human spirit.

Burnham and Root built bigger, taller, and always with an eye towards immediate and maximum return. Often their buildings are functional, well planned and totally joyless, commercial space.

As time went on, Louis Sullivan more and more refused to compromise Art for money. Burnham was only too happy to take the money and run. Eventually all of Burnham's buildings had whatever ornament or decoration they possessed ordered out of standard office catalogues. Major portions of floorplans were lifted, one building to another, standardized. The Greek, Roman and whatever piled on top of each other, meaningless, but appealing to those who felt the need to borrow from others, thier culture. Burnham and Root prospered and the firm lives on today.

Sullivan would have none of it. No mans hard won work would adorn even his smallest structure. He was no thief, no vampire, he was an honest hard working Craftsman, Artist and MAN. His buildings were that, HIS. Every line, every shadow, every curve, shade color and reflection, came from his fertile mind and was meant to excite and free every spirit that beheld and entered it. These were each temples to the ideas of Whitmans transcendence, to what would have been the American Spirit. This was to be the form of Americas true religion.

The forces of America's False religion, Mammon welded to a false Christianity, would have none of this. All art was to be subjigated to immediate fiscal return. The Human Spirit? The Soul? Where are those found at autopsy?

After Sullivan's triumphal Transportation Building at the Chicago Worlds Fair, the gauntlet had been flung upon the table, the direction and intent were clear, and Mammon arrayed itself to destroy Louis Sullivan. They did for decades, deprive Sullivan of his greatest joy, work.

The man who once built the tallest most complex structures then known to the world was reduced to building a few homes and banks far far away from Chicago in little Midwestern rural towns. They stand and are known and loved throughout the world. In the end, he was able to write books and do one last treatese on Ornament. Mammon celebrated his death and in puriant detail regaled would be Architects, would be MEN with the tale of his misfortune.

Sullivans firm died. Only his disciples remained, each in small practices, Purcell, Elmslie, Frank Lloyd Wright, himself by the time of Sullivans death in 1924 also at that point in (temporary) decline.

Burnham and Root, the masters of commerce, of lunch, of the sublimation of all artistic intent to immediate return, the men who invented quarter hour billing, they survived, they prospered, full of unknown un named interchangeable Architects who made buildings of interchangeable universal inspecific parts and plans. Burnham and Root eventually became Haliburton. Today they stand world wide for corporate greed, destruction of the earth, and all that is indecent in the Corporation. Many long to be them, and thus, serve only Mammon. Their buildings,rightfully, are reviled by all who enter.

Out of Louis Sullivans office was birthed Frank Lloyd Wright, who himself also offered the world transcendent Architecture. Out of Frank Lloyd Wright either by direct apprenticeship or extreme influence, came Richard Nuetra, R.M. Schindler, John Lautner, James De Long, Dwain Lind, Harwell Hamilton Harris, Bruce Goff, Jack Himmler,Eric Lloyd Wright, Elizabeth Ingram, Edgar Tafel, Lloyd Wright, Wes Peters, Aaron Greene, John Lloyd Wright, Bart Prince, and many others go forth and preach healing to the mind, body and Spirit of Man. Their buildings are treasured.

Today the fight wages on in America, and around the world. Architects sublimate their authority, power and knowledge to the profit of greedy debased clients, who add nothing to their communities, dishonor the landscape, and have no idea of the Spirit. Others, work less, but they do more, because what they do must endure, as each small example of their work brings with it life.

In the Long run, Louis Sullivan will triumph. The tale of the shabby spiritual life of Burnham and Root will some day be spoken of in hushed tones, and MEN will clebrate Louis Sullivan as the Apostle of the One True God he was.