The People Yes
Some thirty one years ago, in a place far far away, a merry band of activists thought they might be able to vote to form their own City of Isla Vista. For viewing a history of Isla Vista, click on the link above, or you can view some of my beginning edits on Wepidka.
Although you will find some of the pictures already scattered among the site's pages, here they are for your taking I believe since I created the best from tiff files, which I'm not sure if Photoshop keeps as base files or not, but you should still be able to steal my photos at your leisure. The albums, if not quite yet, hopefully will be fully color coded by the particular era.
Activism is defined by the 11th Edition of the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary as "a doctrine or practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action esp. in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue."
In 1972, at the ripe old age of um, well, let's just say I could drink liquor legally, attracted to its location of being near enough, yet still far enough from Surf City, or San Luis Obispo, possessing the title of UC, Ronnie Raygun was yet to elevate the State Colleges due to the unrest at UCB and UCSB over the Vietnam war, among other things, and the fact that it was a well known Department of Sociology, my major, that upon acceptance made it a no brainier. Big City here I come.
Also, I had read the Population Bomb, by Paul Erlick and had the enemy squarely in the viewfinder of my generation's lofty goal of saving the world. I had been drafted, but not accepted because I was gay, and now that I think about it I wonder what I told my Mom? And, I had done the hippy thing in SLO town and felt ready to do battle with the greater enemy, well, only to find out that maybe not. But as it turns out what had landed in its place was much better and much more suited to my disposition. And that was crafting an alternative society that would meet the needs of a whole new generation of Baby Boomers, without all that nasty business of guns, blood, murder and chaos. The alternative services revolution was on, but unlike the better known brother, not yet televised.
Being poor, a la California, beside the usual grants and loans, I had work study of course, and my first quarter was in the campus housing office, under an oppressive bitch of Department head, hated by almost everyone. Where in SLO town, my last summer job, also a work study job, but as a janitor at the Community College, only until I had badgered the regular janitors into submission, not yet understanding the difference between economic classes, did I get a confession out of one of the other janitors as I rant and raved about the building of the Diablo Nuclear Power Plant.
When he confessed, I realized something that hadn't occurred to me – just because you perceive the need does not mean you feel you can change the world, no matter how important or wrong you believe whatever the injustice. I had felt bad after that and never brought any these types of subjects up through the end of my job and still remember it to this day, since this is not taken from notes. But, now I was in a new place and could start again, but alas, not one of the, primarily women office workers, when in the privacy of our break room disagreed with me. Vaguely, I remember the last issue was probably something socialist in nature. Now whether they had seen enough students like myself and knew I was young and feisty, or really agreed, I'll never know. And, I didn't care. Because soon I was off to my next work study assignment, the Isla Vista Community Council.
I really remember only two things in my initial relationship with Chris Atwood, IV Planner Director at the time, was that in my interview I said we needed to eliminate the automobile and the story about the apple. So, my first assignment was to do a survey of Isla Vista residents on their transportation needs or desires. This is where I need to start dragging out books and papers to see if I have a copy, most likely, somewhere. That would give me the original questions and thus the actual purpose of the survey. The survey, regardless of the actual questions asked, supported the concept of what those who had been there and had been activist already the dire 2/15/10 would be a student body initiative that would ask for students to fork over bucks to give to the local transit district in order to use their registration card as a pass, in the Bay Area, referred to as Fast Pass. UC Santa Cruz had passed a similar measure a year or so before. However, because it involved registration money paid by students for campus services, the Chancellor was required to set a percentage of the student body that would be required to vote in order for this pass.
Our informal surveys suggested that if they did vote, it would pass easily. So, he set 50 percent. Now, unless you are in school, or perhaps newly minted from a higher learning institution, you know that student body elections are usually about the last concern, so it seems, any stud net cares about. So, it received over 66 percent of the yes vote, but that other number was a bit of a problem. Fortunately, there had been another one or two issues as well that had also needed this fifty percent, so a special election was granted and held and in the second time we not only received our 50 percent of the student body voting, but maintained our huge yes vote for basically taxing ourselves $3 a quarter for the free use of the bus system.
My first victory and my first Burning Bank Award. Flush with excitement, I continued with my work study, which had not included the actual election I don't believe, my how those details are easily forgotten, well, anyway, my next big adventure was mimeographing the first Isla Vista Incorporation Proposal. And that's in a nutshell how I got to be an activist and only one of three openly gay, I might add.
From those humble beginnings, I worked with others to help bring the food coop to life, would hold the position title of about three normal city positions, all of them running the administrative functions of the community for several years first as IVCC/IVMAC administrator through two more incorporation battles and two elections against the University's proposal.
And then later, in the only governmental agency ever created and still operational, the Isla Vista Recreation and Park District, and finally two years as President of the IVCFCU, in which we staved off the closure of the Credit Union, at least at that time. While I don't believe the Credit Union survived, I am fairly certain, however, being it was the first Credit Union where membership was based on a geographical area, may have lead to the ability of credit unions everywhere an additional tool in which they could enhance their membership instead of just the traditional method of association.
So I do know a bit about the definition presented at the beginning, and this is a very brief description, of my experience, an overview really, but in which I try to underscore my central role as a emerging leader of our community, hopefully without over inflating it, since this would have been against the nature of what we were trying to do.
At least in my mind at that time, it was not about trying to create the next generation of political celebrities, but what might be the next generation of alternative institutions based on new system of non-exploitive capitalism, and, if not entirely socialist, at least for those services deemed vital, on the values that we shared as students and activists. We felt these were values that relied more on cooperation as humans and over time, science has increasingly shown that it is cooperation that wins out in survival, not competition. So, while it may be just fine for televisions and couches, vital services should not be in the hands of the private sector, even if the replacement was not a government, then a non-profit. Our goal was really no less than any of the other more violent reactions going on around the nation to similar pressures, but it was a belief that if we could grab those values, as representative of students and activists of the era, and successfully instill them into reshaping of basic services, we could pull off the revolution without a shot being heard around the world.
How naive or idealist we must have seemed to some, or perhaps stupid to others, but to the conservatives of Santa Barbara, merely a bunch of dope smoking, sex crazed hippies, and the truth as usual exists somewhere in all those adjectives, that we would try to bring it all together through the formation of a city, based on the what we felt was a right, and that was on the right to vote up or down, our city hood proposal.
The IV Free Medical Clinic, modeled after another famous free clinic of the era, was about the only institution that I never was involved with administratively, only reliant upon the services, since it was more or less free to those who worked in community jobs. Also, the Isla Vista Free Medical Clinic was the first to offer a psychological component, again ahead of its time.
But what I feel is one of the more important aspects of this involvement, is the fact that it wasn't this negative, whiny, the sky is falling, everything that's wrong with the world reaction, but a positive, ongoing community based creation of vital services that would work for us just as we would be responsible to ensure that it would work at and for all. The true negatives were those people who stood in our way and insisted we do it their way or not at all,which may sound a tad familiar to some.
And, this story has not been told, it is not dangerous, nor having those things that make for quite the same type of narrative, with the exception for allowance of the initial violent excess. Outside of Kent State and riots at UCB and SF State College, black communities, and the Democratic National Convention, this was the scene of a major student revolt, a burning of branch of a major capitalist institution, precipitating the then Governor of the state, Ronnie Raygun to send in the National Guard to totally terrorize the student population, beating anyone, regardless of their involvement, into submission, certainly a solid fascist response that could have made Hitler proud.
Regardless of the vibrant activist scene, no matter how creative and inspired the visions for services and alternative institutions, no matter whether they would have remained a freak nature of a small student community or whether they would have grown into something more fully integrated, the one thing that remains is that without the structure and ability to govern and direct this creative energy through an unified vision as the City of Isla Vista, then what originally was speculated as happening, happened.
One of the major items thrown against us was the transient nature of Isla Vista and in a few years it would fall into disarray, falter and die, although they never went that far since the idiocy of their statement would have been more glaringly obvious. But this is precisely what did happen, because without a city that could pay for a workforce that would stabilize the government, then one of the more powerful statements at the end of the documentary on the Weather Underground, by Bernardine Dohm, made me realize the consequence, even though we probably didn't realize it, "we just walked away, but it feels like unfinished business."
So after three times before LAFCo, two elections fighting the University’s plan known as Two-Tier government, suddenly it was 1980, it now seems that regardless of what I may have thought at that time, I too had too just walk away, and today it remains and feels like unfinished business. That is why I still believe in a City of Isla Vista.
