According to published reports, he died near his home in Colorado. He was 84.
Morea was a central figure in the downtown radical movements of the 1960s. The Brooklyn native helped found the art-anarchist collective Up Against the Wall Motherfucker and the anarchist publication Black Mask, and was involved in a series of headline-grabbing protests and direct actions, including demonstrations at MoMA, the Pentagon, Columbia University, and the Fillmore East.
He also took part in a well-known protest in which Lower East Side garbage was dumped into the fountains at Lincoln Center to draw attention to city neglect and sanitation conditions downtown.
In recent days, someone left a tribute to Morea outside the vacant storefront that once was part of the Fillmore East, the 2,700-seat concert venue (RIP 1971) on Second Avenue at Sixth Street.
A parting thought from CrimethInc.:
Ben was not simply an old revolutionary from another era, nor a nostalgic remnant of the American counterculture. He was one of those rare human beings who attempted to transform rebellion into a total form of life — to erase the borders between self and other, poetry and insurrection, art and survival, to bring global social revolution to the streets of the metropolis.
