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Today's post is a long one, so I'm going to start with my daily photo and then get to today's story.
god bless americar?

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Looking back, I'm still not sure what was going through my head when I decided to climb the fence, but I did. As a result, my first political protest ended with me handcuffed, packed in a school bus full of other arrested protesters on our way to be processed, joyously singing "we all live in a yellow submarine."

My path to handcuffs started with the drama of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident. I think I might have never noticed; I would have never paid attention to the news; I would have continued on with my boring suburban life had the timing not been what it was.

Like many in my generation, I was introduced to the existence of nuclear power by the release of the movie The China Syndrome in March '79. Like most in my generation, it meant nothing to me.

When the movie ended up being mirrored by reality in late March and early April, it did catch my attention but I probably would have not given it much thought if it was not for the fact that it threatened to interfere with my own life.

My Bar Mitzvah was scheduled for April 7th 1979. Some of my relatives would have to travel past the troubled Pennsylvania reactor. There was talk of them having to cancel the trip. As the crisis escalated, there was even some talk of having to cancel the event altogether. No one really knew what would happen if they did not get the reactor under control.

My Bar Mitzvah happened, all the guests showed up. I read from the Torah while radioactive gases were being vented into the air to keep the reactor from blowing up. My life was changed, I wandered down the road less traveled. I now paid attention to the news; I was concerned about politics and the environment. I became an activist.

When I learned that there was a nuclear power plant being built 25 miles from my home, I was freaked out. When I heard that a large coalition had formed and was organizing a protest, I decided to go.

Sunday, June 3rd 1979 was a miserable rainy day. I had heard on the radio (my introduction to WBAI, a station that would become the background noise to so much of my later life) that the protest organizers were going to have a couple of vans at the Port Jefferson and Riverhead Long Island Railroad stations to take people arriving on one or two morning trains to the beach where the protest was going to happen. My bicycle took me through the pouring rain a mile or two to the closest LIRR station.

An hour later, the rain had let up a bit and I was in the middle of a 15,000 person crowd. I listened to some folks talk about how important it was to prevent the completion of the plant; I heard Pete Seeger play for the first time. The energy was amazing. I shouted and chanted along with the crowd. I felt I was participating in history.

10 years later, when I was Production Manager of The Guardian Newsweekly, Pete Seeger showed up to say hi and entertain us as we got that week's paper ready to go to press. I was so in awe, I never got up the courage to tell him this story.

But, to get back to 1979: Just about the time it got brutally boring, we started to march. We marched along beside the fence surrounding the plant. Suddenly, people started climbing the fence.

It took me by surprise, but this was not a spontaneous action -- it was well planned. Some secret signal had been given and it seemed everyone but me knew what to do next. People had ladders, some of them home made out of rope and planks of wood. At another part of the march, what the NY Times called a "militant splinter group" of 20 people "stormed the main gate, removed the holding pins from the hinges and sent it crashing to the ground."

Where I was it was more mellow. Someone put a wooden ladder against the fence, a piece of carpet over the barbed wire and people started flowing over the fence.

I did not think too much about it, it looked like fun. It seemed to be the right thing to do. It was a symbolic but defiant action of resistance and protest.

Next thing I knew, I was over the fence. As my feet hit the ground, I realized that I had no clue what the hell I was doing. I had no plan. "Oh crap, what the hell do I do now?"

Before I could answer that question in my own head, two cops grabbed me and politely asked me to come with them. I was under arrest. I was 13, my parents had no clue where I was and I had no desire to tell them.

The mood on the buses of arrestees -- The NY Times and Newsday reported that over 600 people were detained or arrested -- was joyful. Singing, celebrating, chanting, swaying back and forth rocking the bus on its aged shocks.

When we got off the bus, the reality hit me. I was actually under arrest. They explained to the group that as long as we gave them our names, we would be given a summons and let go. If we refused to give our names, they would hold us on additional charges.

When my turn came, a cop sat me down and asked me for my name. I was terrified. I did not want to be put in jail, I did not know what would happen, but all that paled compared to my fear of my parents finding out -- there was no way in hell I was going to give them my name and my parent's phone number. "Just let me call your parents and they can come pick you up," the officer pleaded with me. I refused. No matter what they would do to me it was nothing compared to what my parents would do to me if they found out where I was and that I was under arrest. My last name is not common, so just that info would lead them to the only Goldhagen in the phonebook and that would lead towards nothing good. "I'm sorry sir, but I will not answer your questions," I repeated.

They were getting frustrated. I was put in a chair facing the corner. I guess they figured that eventually I'd get hungry or scared enough to cooperate. I was probably just about to break when a miracle happened.

One of the people that was on the bus with me, who while being processed heard my conversation with the cops, burst into the holding area with her partner. "Where is he!" "I'll wring his little neck" "I told him to stay out of trouble" he was shouting as she played along trying to calm him down.

Knowing nothing but my first name, they convinced the cops that they were my parents, and that if the police released me into their custody they would certainly teach me a lesson I would never forget. (I can assure you that they did, and I never will).

I think the cops just wanted me out of their way, so they handed me over to my "parents." As soon as we were out of the building, their "anger" turned into hysterical laughter. I had been un-arrested by strangers who now were offering to buy me dinner and drive me home -- along the way getting me stoned out of my mind.

I rode my bike back home from the LIRR station feeling like I was flying high above the roadway. I had discovered a place out of the mainstream where I felt alive; where over the years I would be challenged to learn, develop a clear understanding of the issues and my own political power.

In the years that followed, I testified at two public hearings held by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and continued to participate in the protests against the Shoreham power plant.

Our best point of attack was about evacuation. Most of the people that would need to be evacuated in case of an emergency, due to the nature of Long Island geography would have to either pass closer to the danger zone or somehow be taken by boat across the Long Island Sound.

At one of the NRC hearings, I was scheduled to talk right after the lunch break. The commissioners returned 45 minutes late -- they apologized and explained that they got stuck in traffic coming back from lunch. Instead of my prepared speech, I taunted the panel. They could not even get 3 miles during the middle of the day and they expected it to be possible to move half the population of Suffolk County on those same roads quickly and orderly in a crisis.

Finally, in 1983, the Suffolk County Legislature decided in a 15-1 vote that the county could not be safely evacuated and Governor Mario Cuomo ordered state official to not approve any evacuation plan sponsored by the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO).

This would all have a happy ending if not for the reality of the Political Power of LILCO. It was clear to everyone involved that they would never ever get a license for the plant. It was clear that we had won.

There was a chance that the structure could be used for some other purpose. However, in 1985 the federal government gave LILCO permission to bring the plant online for "testing." After that, the building could never be used for something else. If it is ever torn down it now must be disposed of as hazardous, radioactive waste.

Then, as a final insult, in 1989 Cuomo and LILCO announced the closure of the plant -- which involved the state taking over the plant and then attaching a 3 percent surcharge to Long Island electric bills for 30 years to pay off the $6 billion price tag caused by the arrogance of LILCO and the NRC.

That day in 1979 was the start of my life as an activist and the beginning of the end of the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant. I'm still active and sadly so is it.

Another long post so again the photo this time comes first.

This is one of the stories I referred to a couple days ago -- one of the adventures I had with Slugthang (and lest I appear to downplay her role, let me say that Orna was a star of this episode as well). I can't tell you the exact date, I can't even remember what year it was. 1993? 1995?

This is one of those events that seems to have vanished down the memory hole of the Tasini decision. I know it was reported, I was there, I remember reading the press coverage afterward. I can't find it anywhere.

So, on some day in some year in the early to mid 1990's I step off an AMTRAK train in Seattle and into another story. The cross country train ride was an adventure of its own, part of which is worth a tangent.

[After finishing the first draft of this story, I was reminded that this happened during the height of the Tonya Harding Olympic scandal, so I can definitively say it was 1994]

I was on my way to visit Slugo and Orna in Portland. It's day 2 of my 3 day trip from NYC to Seattle. The plan is for them to pick me up in Seattle and head to Portland for a week or two. As with most of my long-distance train trips around the U.S., I spend most of my time in the lounge/bar car. The sun is starting to set and it's just starting to get to the point where the light outside is less bright than the lights inside the train. The sights outside start mingling with reflections of the human adventure inside the train.

The night before, I crossed paths with a woman I would never see again but who for years would be one of those "what if" relationships. We kept in touch infrequently for a few months afterward. What if I had replied to her letters; what if I had not stopped calling her back; what if we saw each other again?

Oh boy, my tangent is diverting onto a tangent. Let's just say that after our day and a half flirtation she looked up and wondered aloud "I wish it was the 60's when love and sex were less stressful. For example, if not for the way that AIDS has changed sexual attitudes, what are the chances that we'd be finding a secluded spot on the train so we could... well... you know?"

An hour later, thanks to the bar-car bartender's "emergency rations" (stock of condoms) and my comfortable sleeping bag, we'd be answering that question as if it was still 1968.

Anyway, that experience had me feeling pretty good about the world and confident about myself. That plus a few beers leads me from tangent b back to tangent a. There I am, watching the world going by outside slowly morph into the reflection of the world inside. The reflections were just strong enough for me to notice one guy being picked up by his shirt and pushed down the length of the car by someone much larger than him. Hell, he was about twice my size as well.

The violence of the situation was not immediately clear to me, but when I heard the larger of the two say "fucking faggot, I'm going to push your faggot ass off this train" things became all too clear.

Being all hopped up on my own virility and beer, without thinking I got myself involved in the scuffle. I stood up, positioned myself between the two and said to the large fascist gay-basher something along the lines of "hey man, I'm not sure where you come from, but where I'm from this sort of shit just does not fly, leave this guy alone and go back to beating your wife."

He was confused just enough to hesitate before taking a swing at me. His hesitation was just long enough to give two AMTRAK staff time to grab him from behind and tackle him to the ground.

Over the next few hours, as the attacker, the intended victim and I were kept under the supervision of various AMTRAK employees, I would learn the back-story to the mess I had just jumped into.

The guy that was attacked, and the well-prepared bar car bartender were flirting with each other. The fascist and his friends heard them and when the two were making plans for meeting up in San Francisco a couple days later, they decided that it was their red-blooded American duty to bash the queers.

If not for the fact that an AMTRAK employee was involved and made it clear to everyone else who was the aggressor, I'm not sure what would have happened. I might have been the one to be dragged off the train in handcuffs at the next stop.

We get to the next stop and I'm asked to give a statement to the police. The AMTRAK employee and victim of the attack had already given theirs and I was needed to corroborate their story. The cop involved obviously did not want to deal with it and was doing his best to downplay the situation. As I was telling the cop what I had seen, the gay-bashing pinhead sticks his head out of the train, looks at me and says "you getting off in Whitefish (a resort town a stop or two away)? I'll kick your ass"

The cop had no choice at that point. "OK idiot, go back into the train, get your bags and come back. You're under arrest." Then, one of his friends makes a similar threat, this time to the AMTRAK bartender. With an annoyed look the cop says "You too. You're under arrest"

One by one, each member of this 10 person crew of bigots would do something similar. One by one they were taken from the train and arrested. Imagine if you will, a clown car of fascists.

With these two memorable and bizarre nights behind me, I arrive in Seattle.

Slugo and Orna welcome me to town and announce to me that we're not going to Portland just yet, there is an Earth First! demo at the Port of Tacoma the next day and we're heading there first.

That night, we arrived at a house where the final planning for the action was going on. Someone told me we were in Seattle. In different times I would have wanted to know more details. In those days, even knowing we were in Seattle felt like knowing too much.

Plans had been made to blockade the section of the Port of Tacoma where old growth forests, having been sliced into easier to stack boards, were exported across the oceans.

This was during the phase where Earth First! was moving from a focus on back-woods direct action to experimentation with merging their "no compromise" philosophy and public protest. Many of the methods that came out of those experiments would evolve into critical parts of events like the 1999 shut down of the WTO meetings in Seattle.

A few days earlier, a number of 55 gallon barrels had been filled with cement, lengths of steel rebar, and some pvc tubes that would allow people to stick their arms in -- using chains and either locks or (more often) carbineers to secure themselves to the barrels and become a very hard to move blockade.

Still on a total high from the insanity of the past couple days, I looked for a place to plug into the action. I had no interest in the planning, in making the decisions and in some ways I had no place there either. This was not really my struggle, and only peripherally my community. I knew those involved for enough years to put my trust in whatever they had in mind. They knew me enough to trust that I was not an agent or provocateur so I was allowed to participate.

They needed another person to ride in the back of a box truck which would be among the first vehicles to arrive at the gates, delivering the payload of barrels before the security forces had time to figure out what was going on.

As the sun came up the next morning, the caravan hit the road. A mile or so away from the blockade target, the truck stopped and 6 or 7 of us jumped into the back. The truck moved on and we all spent the next 5 or 10 minutes doing our best to not end up crushed to death by the barrels. We had failed to secure them to the sides of the truck and with each turn and hill the barrels slid around. If not for the intense desire among that group of comrades to live to see the next day; if not for the evolutionary gift of adrenaline our friends would have opened the back gate of the truck to a very gory mess of crushed parts.

You can tell a lot about the politics of a doctor, chiropractor or massage therapist by their reaction to an honest answer to the question "how did you initially hurt your shoulder?"

The truck stopped. The door slid open and we rolled out the barrels. Other friends quickly put them into place and the lockdown crew attached themselves to complete the chain. In a matter of moments, that section of the Port of Tacoma was shut down for the rest of the day.

Slowly the cops, with the help of Sanitation and road construction workers, dismantled our blockade and filled a police van with those arrested.

Most of us kept a safe distance, singing and chanting and making sure our friends were not mistreated. A small crew made their way over the fence and to the nearby warehouse and unfurled a banner. The only violence of the day happened as they tried to get back and were grabbed by some dock workers. They all made it back, teaching their would-be captors a lesson -- these hippies hit back.

As the last member of the blockade crew was removed from his barrel, a news crew asked him for a comment. He was a total anomaly to them -- wearing a suit and a Tonya Harding pin. He looked into the camera and with a little quiver in his voice explained that "I'm doing this for my god, my country, and Tonya!" at which point we all started chanting "Tonya! Tonya! Tonya!"

The total absurdity of it all gave one young woman (I think she was 17 or 18) the chance to scramble under the police van and lock her neck to the front axle. Now, the police van was the blockade.

The sun started to set, the arrestees were moved to another van, the axle was removed allowing the young woman with lock still around her neck to be taken away with the other arrested activists and we switched to legal support mode.

Years later, an alliance between these activist and some dock workers would be built; the logging company would go bankrupt due to its shortsighted policies. Clearcutting of the old growth forests continues but has been slowed a bit. This was mostly due to the spotted owl, but it still feels like we had changed the world, even if only just a bit.

as with other long posts/stories, today the photos come first.

 
 
the times they have a'changed

Memorial Day 1991 was a major turning point in the struggle for the soul of the Lower East Side. The riot that erupted in Tompkins Square was used to publicly justify a plan already in the works to alter the park and neighborhood.

It became obvious pretty fast that we had fallen for a provocation; that we had played into the hands of the enemy. We gave the City exactly what it wanted.

Now, keep in mind that at that point, riots in Tompkins Square were more a ritual of summer than a rare event -- starting with the infamous 1988 Police Riot. The stakes were high; a lot of powerful people had a lot of money and future political power riding on the economic shift and wave of displacement of long time residents known as gentrification.

The park was the center of activity for those that opposed these changes. The bandshell in the park was rumored to have been built after some racial hostilities in the 60s. The idea, the rumor says, was that by allowing all parts of the community to easily put on concerts, performances and protests those different parts of the community would learn more about each other and possibly even interact and find common ground.

From what I could tell it worked. However, much to the dismay of the powers that be, it worked too well. The different factions and segments of the neighborhood started to realize that not only did they have common ground, but they also had a common enemy.

The park had to be "cleaned up" and closed at night. The bandshell needed to disappear. The City still had a bit of a black eye in terms of how the public viewed the situation around the park. The revelations that followed the '88 Police Riot still lingered in public memory.

If the City could win back the narrative; if they could regain the moral high ground, the plans could move forward.

Contracts to build a 10 foot fence around the park had already been signed; plans to demolish the bandshell already in place -- all they needed was a pretense.

I was at a meeting of the anarchist affinity group I'd been participating in for a while. It was like a scene from Monty Pytyon's "Life of Brian." The People's Front is meeting and someone comes in to tell them that the revolution is happening NOW. Their reaction... "ok, new agenda..."

OK, that's not exactly how it went, but we were meeting at the apartment I shared with my girlfriend and another friend when one of the affinity group members came in and told us that the concert in the park looked like it was developing into a bit of a riot. We all headed out into the streets; the park was only two blocks away.

The rumor -- to this day I do not know if it was true or not -- was that the cops started harassing a homeless man and he decided that with all those anarchists, squatters, housing activists and homeless advocates in the park that he had no reason to take their crap. One thing led to another and soon the bottles were flying and the back and forth surge of cops in one direction and then bottles and activists pushing them back started.

The cops retreated; fires were built; trash cans were overturned and makeshift barricades went up.

The cops went around to all the stores and restaurants still open and warned them that they should shut down. I'll never forget Ray, the guy that owns the small news stand/soda shop on Ave A. just north of 7th street. When he was told to close, he told the cops that the activists were his customers and as long as we were in the street he'd stay open.

There was a strange mood in the air. At one point, someone that none of the neighborhood activists recognized came out of the crowd. Only a few people thought it was strange that he had a crowbar, only a few objected when he broke the locks off the health and beauty aids store north of Ray's.

The gate rolled up and a mob ransacked the place. Even if we won the battle of that night, we had just lost the war.

Eventually a torrential downpour started, the fires went out and everyone ran for shelter.

Public opinion anywhere but in the neighborhood was turned against us. A couple weeks later the park was closed; the fence built; the bandshell destroyed; 14 months of police occupation had begun.

One night after the closing of the park, during a protest a limousine nearly ran down half the crowd. These days, a limo on Ave C and 7th street could be a tourist partying at one of the million hip bars or nightclubs; even someone who lives in the vicinity. Those days, especially on that corner, it meant one thing: some rich jackass buying heroin. The driver of the limo freaked out, and with hundreds of people on either side of the car marching down the street, drove through the crowd. No one was hurt but a lot of people were angry. In a frantic move to get away from the angry crowd, the driver turned down 5th street.

Anyone familiar with the neighborhood would have known to not make that mistake. 5th between C and B is a dead end. The driver stops at the end of the street, thinks for a minute and then turns around, sees the angry crowd and floors it. Luckily we all got out of the way and no one was killed.

There are two details about this event that stick with me. The license plate of that limo (New Jersey, OL519C) and the way the NY Times mentioned this part of the protest under the subhead "Bad Relations With Neighbors" telling the story, without anything but the reporter's outsider assumptions, of how the protest attacked a neighbor, in his car on his way home.

Even among most of the staff of the radical weekly newspaper I worked for at the time, The Guardian Newsweekly, the view of the story followed the official narrative. Not only did I sense a disrespect of this movement but the story was never covered in depth in the paper.

One staff member even referred to that report as she told me of how the demonstrations and activists, who she believed to be crazed anarchists, acted without respect for the people that lived in the neighborhood. When it came to coverage of foreign issues, she knew not to trust the Times, but when it came to issues in her own city she trusted the Times more than the members of the staff that had seen the protests with their own eyes.

Some good came out of this. Alliances were strengthened among many factions in the neighborhood. Anarchists stood side by side with church parishioners, priests, immigrants, artists and even a few yuppies in an event called "hands around the park."

A nightly ritual that became known as "walking the pig" started the day after the park was closed and continued nightly for at least a month. We'd walk around the neighborhood chanting and singing -- a crowd of up to a couple thousand people, followed by hundreds of well armed riot cops.

Those alliances continue to today, but much of what we were fighting for has been lost.

So, on this memorial day, I sat back in the park and remembered some of my comrades in struggle that are no longer with us. Uncle Donie, Presente! Lisa, Presente! Brad, Presente!, Michael, Presente! I remain inspired by your spirits.