Good evening this is John Trudell. We have been lucky here, we haven’t really had a lot of cold weather. And we, about a week ago, we received $15,000 worth of medical supplies and beds from Los Angeles. I think George Brown donated it to us. He brought it up here. We’ve got things pretty well in shape here. Our biggest hassles right now are with food supplies, fresh foods, and we have a boat problem yet. We are still chartering a boat but we are looking into buying a boat of our own, because that is our biggest single expense.
We also are working so that we can send runners out to the people who are associated with the Alcatraz movement. To go visit as many of these Indian people as possible so that they can answer the questions that are asked. And so that they can get this information out and start building our ties a little stronger. We haven’t been able to do this very effectively in the past because it takes money to do these things. We see a real big need for this, so we are trying to tie everything in together here. We are sending our speakers out nationwide. So while the people are on the speaking engagements we are trying to send our runners to the reservations and urban Indian organizations, to where our speaking engagements may be. We are learning to use all the resources and take advantage of everything that is given to us. ~
SOURCE: Johnson, Troy R, The Occupation of Alcatraz Island. 1996