“They inspire and transcend and stimulate,” Dylan wrote, and help “put an end to this mild dull taste of petty commercialism which is being passed off as artist art by the overpowering mass media. Hurray for John & Yoko.”
The John Lennon - Deportation Proceedings
Letters to the INS
In 1972 the Nixon Administration began deportation proceedings against John Lennon and Yoko Ono, claiming they had been admitted to the country in violation of then-existing immigration law. Lennon and Ono argued that the deportation order was a politically-motivated effort to silence them as critics of the war in Vietnam. The “National Committee for John and Yoko” and the “Committee for Artistic Freedom” organized people to write the INS with the message, “let them stay in the USA.” Jon Wiener filed a Freedom of Information request with the INS for their files on Lennon, which led them to release almost 200 letters written by artists and celebrities. A selection of those letters appears here for the first time.