Altamont Music Festival, 1970
The Altamont Music Festival was intended to mirror Woodstock, peace, love, and music. What occured instead was a badly organized festival and a violent day of beatings by the Hell's Angels. Dr. Fine was present as a MCHR representative.
In the California's Health magazine article, Dr. Fine said,
''We mustered nine physicians, including several psychiatrists, 12 registered nurses and some 40 medics. Dr. Richard Baldwin, of Inverness, and I coordinated the people and supplies we had, starting Friday evening. We were terribly undersupplied. We got four vans there with medical supplies and almost immediately had to send out for more."
In the Good Times article,
Richard Fine, chairman of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, labeled the concert promoters "morally irresponsible" for the manner in which the festival was staged. "We had one day to mobilize medical personnel and supplies. We got shitty support from the people running the thing who didn't realize what was crucial from a medical standpoint, and wouldn't give us the authority to do such things as set up a workable evacuation procedure. And we had no time to mobilize community people for help with bad trips. It was just piss-poor planning. A lot of the bad trips were violent because there was so much violence in the air. There were a lot of beatings. Girls were beaten-I sewed up a lot of girls. It was like the fucking [police] Tac[tical] Squad ran around. We feel that we as well as everyone else in the crowd was exploited by the promoters," Fine fumed.
