OWS Protesters and Marcuse’s Political Preface 1966

Canal Workers - photo by Sebastiao Salgado

Marcuse’s Political Preface (Eros and Civiliation) seems to have some relevance to where we find ourselves at this moment in American history.

“To the degree to which organized labor operates in defense of the status quo, and to the degree to which the share of labor in the material process of production declines,intellectual skills and capabilities become social and political factors. Today, the organized refusal to cooperate of the scientists, mathematicians, technicians, industrial psychologists and public opinion pollsters may well accomplish what a strike, even a large-scale strike, can no longer accomplish but once accomplished, namely, the beginning of the reversal, the preparation of the ground for political action. That the idea appears utterly unrealistic does not reduce the political responsibility involved in the position and function of the intellectual in contemporary industrial society. The intellectual refusal may find support in another catalyst, the instinctual refusal among the youth in protest. It is their lives which are at stake, and if not their lives, their mental health and their capacity to function as unmutilated humans. Their protest will continue because it is a biological necessity. “By nature,” the young are in the forefront of those who live and fight for Eros against Death, and against a civilization which strives to shorten the “detour to death” while controlling the means for lengthening the detour. But in the administered society, the biological necessity does not immediately issue in action; organization demands counter-organization. Today the fight for life, the fight for Eros, is the political fight.”

Here is the entire Political Preface.

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Women’s Club Occupies Sonoma with Trees

Like many, I have been following the OWS movement all over the United States, including the recent events at UC Berkeley and UC Davis. This may sound like an excuse, but I have four children at home to take care of, so camping out for weeks on end doesn’t really leave my family in great shape.  So I send the occupiers my gratitude as well as my hopes no harm will come to any of them. In the meantime, I continue to plant trees and remove invasive plants at the wildlife preserve where I volunteer.

I was reminded yesterday of Sonoma’s history of occupation, a history that includes some very uppity women who wanted to plant trees in order to decolonize our eight acre Plaza (the largest in California) from its former inhabitants and uses. Suzie Rodriguez of the Sonoma Index Tribune writes:

“For starters, the old plaza in the center of town was a disgrace. The train depot was located there, and the ugly, treeless dirt square was the first glimpse debarking passengers had of Sonoma.

As for residents, they avoided the plaza if they could. With pasture-seeking cattle herded through on a daily basis, it was dotted with dung, pocked with holes, and quite unsanitary. It also morphed into a giant mudpit when it rained.”

In another account, the Plaza is described as having been “a treeless, unattractive cattle yard where animals were frequently slaughtered. Early pioneers wrote about the unpleasant stench that surrounded it.”

That the land was taken forcefully from the many Native peoples that lived in the valley, and that many of them were forced into slavery, is another, much sadder part of Sonoma’s rich history. We all know how that story ended.

In any case, the push on the part of the Women’s Club wasn’t met with much enthusiasm by the men in the Valley. Today, anyone who has visited the Plaza knows what a worthy endeavor it was. In autumn, the rain of papery gold leaves from the three giant American Elms is a scene too surreal to describe. Mothers and children and grandparents, lovers, tourists, musicians, school groups – the Plaza is the model of how a central, public gathering place creates community.

The right to gather in public space for the purpose of peaceful protest – EVEN IF IT’S A CLOWN PARADE AT THE FARMER’S MARKET – is also a Constitutional Right. I think we’d have a lot to say as a town if the police pepper-sprayed students and teachers from Sonoma Valley High School for protesting peacefully against things like skyrocketing college tuition, lack of vocational training, widespread corporate greed, ravaged natural resources, state budget cuts to public schools and the impossibility of a decent job; these are all things that my generation took for granted but are now rapidly disappearing from their future.

I am writing this blog to express my gratitude to the OWS protestors as well as my horror at the recent police brutality on both UC campuses. And to those troublesome women  - our local Entwives – who wanted to plant some trees to make their community a better place for people and other living things – I tip my hat.

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Solaris and the Death Drive

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