The Lexicographer's Rules

"In my case, the FBI visited The Weavers' booking agent, the recording company, my neighbors, my dentist husband's patients, my friends. In the waning of our career, the Weavers were followed down the street, accosted onstage by drunken 'patriots,' warned by friendly hotel employees to keep the door open if we rehearsed in anyone's room so as not to become targets for the vice squad. It was nasty. Every two-bit local wannabe G-man joined the dragnet searching out and identifying 'communist spies.'"

—Online Journal. During the Fifties, Ronnie Gilbert was a member of the folk music group The Weavers, which was investigated by the FBI for possible Communist connections. Now, as part of a peaceful movement called Women in Black, she finds herself under investigation again. "In all those self-debasing years, how many spies did that dragnet pull in? Nary a one. Instead it pulled down thousands of teachers, union members, scientists, journalists, actors, entertainers like us, who saw our lives disrupted, our jobs, careers go down the drain, our standing in the community lost, even our children harassed. A scared population soon shut their mouths up tight."'

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