< 8 Newsgrams but stargazers were treated to about 90 percent of the great ball of gas and fire being ebbed out, say park officials, which left “only a glowing, crescent-shaped sliver of the sun visible.” In celebration of this once-in-a-generation event, the park service hosted viewing events on May 20. At the Point Reyes National Seashore, ranger-led programs and talks took place during the day at the Bear Valley Visitor Center—there was an hour-long talk about the sun using the Science on a Sphere exhibit at the center; solar viewers were passed out in the Bear Valley parking lot. Cicely Muldoon, park superintendent of PRNS, called it an “unparalleled opportunity” to experience the celestial event. “This eclipse is another example of how the public can enjoy the world around them from practically their own backyard,” said Muldoon. Park officials emphasized that “safety is critical” when viewing an eclipse—especially a partial one.Viewers were advised to use special solar glasses or other protection to view the event.“One should never look directly at the sun, nor use telescopes or sunglasses,” advised a park report.
Candidates hold a doobie of a press conference Three congressional candidates bogarted the spotlight last week by staging a conference to publicly denounce the federal crackdown on California medical marijuana dispensaries. Andy Caffrey of Garberville, William Courtney of Caspar and John Lewallen of Philo—all running for the 2nd District seat being vacated by Lynn Woolsey—appeared together the afternoon of May 17 at 6 School Street Plaza in Fairfax, the former location of the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana—the longtime medical marijuana clinic that was evicted from the premises in December as part of the Justice Department’s push to enforce federal marijuana laws. The three candidates called for local support in “demanding that the government stop the federal attack on legal medical marijuana,” which they say has so far resulted in the shutdown of 200 cannabis dispensaries across the state. Caffrey publicly smoked a “medicinal joint in protest of Obama’s War on Medicine” at the press conference. Caffrey, who receives medical marijuana as a sufferer of post-traumatic stress disorder, lit up in similar fashion last weekend at an Occupy Mendocino event. “I became the first congressional candidate to smoke a joint during his own campaign speech, to protest President Obama’s War on Medicine,” says Caffrey.“This is a fundamental right that all three of us—John Lewallen, Dr. Courtney and I—will never compromise on and never stop fighting for. We are the Emerald Triangle.” Lewallen frames the pot crackdown as a “coercive campaign” by the FDA and the IRS. “Federal tactics of coercion, including SWAT-team raids, threats of prosecution and asset forfeiture, and denial of rights to open bank accounts and deduct business expenses, are forcing legal medical marijuana dispensaries to close,” says Lewallen.“Public officials are afraid to adopt regulations. The legal medical marijuana dispensaries still operating live in an atmosphere of terror, and deserve the support of all business owners and other citizens.” Courtney, a physician, says he is concerned the federal “attack” will prevent him from treating seriously ill child patients with “non-psychoactive” marijuana. “Clinical cannabis is used by my patients with infant epilepsy, cancer and other very serious diseases, with amazing healing results,” says Courtney. Does “the federal government feel that some children do not deserve the right to life?” Will the real Marc Levine please stand up? The aforementioned pot/press conference was timed to precede that evening’s Marin City Community Forum, which took place at the Marin City Senior Center, where candidates for Congress, state Assembly and the county Board of Supervisors were on hand to greet community members and discuss issues concerning Marin City and southern Marin.The Marin City forum, too, featured some campaign histrionics, as San Rafael political activist Jonathan Frieman arrived telling forum hosts he was a write-in candidate named Mark Levine—a none-too-subtle allusion to his arch nemesis, San Rafael City Councilmember and Assembly candidate Marc Levine.The faux Levine wound up with a seat at the candidates’ table a few chairs down from his foe Levine, but ultimately the forum crasher made it clear that he was known by day as “Jonathan Frieman.”Which raises a more philosophical question: Is it better to have Levined and lost, than never to have Levined at all? Green for the greenbacks A program to help small businesses and nonprofits (and larger companies with specific target projects), become more sustainable and profitable is being offered in San Rafael June 7 and 8. The Greening for Profit Smart Start program covers carbon emissions, lighting, HVAC, water use and waste and employee engagement and marketing. For more information, see websites for the city of San Rafael or Greening For Profit, or call 415/4953407. Maybe we could be heroes, just for one day... May 23 was the 15th annual “Relay of Firefighter Heroes,” which rolled through Marin in all its fire-prevention glory. A parade of antique and modern emergency vehicles started off at the Healdsburg Fire Department before heading south, stopping in Novato, San Rafael, at the Mill Valley Fire Station and ending in a grand finale at the Marin County Fire Department in Marin City. Along the way the heroes collected funds to provide services to burn survivors and to support burn prevention programs. 10 PACIFIC SUN MAY 25 - MAY 31, 2012
< 8 ‘Bust’ a movement ers—sometimes even without demands. The question is: In this tussle between the old Left and the new Left, who will win? And if temporarily the old Left triumphs then we’re in for a hard year this year and possibly even next, but bit by bit this movement does herald a new Left. This movement has made the Left cool again. How does one build counter-hegemonic power and get beyond “crowd sourcing,” which is really what the Occupy general assemblies are? In the next few years there will be what I call a “meme war”—a war of really big ideas within economics. Will we be able to pull off a paradigm shift from neoclassical economics to this new ecological or bionomic or psychonomic discipline that is bubbling underneath the surface? Will we be able to change our current dysfunctional marketplace into one in which the price of every product tells the ecological truth? Will we be able to impose Robin Hood taxes and dismantle this global casino with more than $1 trillion a day flushing around the system in derivatives and credit default swaps and other financial instruments? If we on the Left try to figure out what these meta memes are and start fighting for them, then we will get somewhere. If we fall back on the old ways of doing things, then capitalism is going to swallow us whole. Where does power over the distribution of societal resources fit into this equation? How is the Occupy movement going to redistribute wealth from the 1 percent to the 99 percent? Quite frankly, the question you ask betrays the fact that you are quoting the old Left. The way to fix the problem may not actually be a straightforward approach of passing some laws and taking some money from the 1 percent and giving it to the 99 percent. Maybe we have to have a more sophisticated approach where we don’t play out this kind of class warfare idea. The change has to be deeper. If we can finally ram through this Robin Hood tax, which a lot of people are for in Europe, and make it very high, not just a .01 percent but a 1 percent tax on all financial transactions, then that will be a deep-down transformation of casino capitalism, and all of a sudden the Robin Hood tax would collect trillions of dollars every year and then we the people of the world could start arguing over how to spend that money. Isn’t the legislative process needed to enact or “ram through” redistributive policies like the Robin Hood tax? Once you do that, you’re accepting the status quo. Maybe the real job is to launch a third political party in America that is initiated on the Internet, gets mil-
lion of signatures, and then has a convention. Maybe the task of changing the political landscape of America with a third party is a way smarter move than what the Tea Party did with the Republicans, and what so many people are saying we should do with the Democrats. The trick for the political Left is to think deeper. Instead of thinking, “Hey, let’s pass a law that legislates the Robin Hood tax,” let’s change the political landscape. Take, for example, the idea we launched last year. In the general assemblies we have a microcosm of a democratic process that’s magical and beautiful. It works and this is a metaphor for how America should work. Eventually, I agree, we will have to pass laws and do all that stuff you are talking about, but there is a lot of deep-down rabble-rousing that needs to happen before we get to that point. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., has said: “Simply being in a public place and voicing your opinion in and of itself doesn’t do anything politically... I don’t know what the voting behavior of all these people is but I’m a little unhappy when people who don’t vote, who didn’t vote last time, blame me for the consequences of not voting.” Is this an argument for the Occupy movement to enter the electoral system? It reminds me of an old adage: If you’re a carpenter, you see everything as a nail and a hammer. Barney Frank has done some good things with legislation. But he is blind, as are so many other Americans, including the Tea Partiers and most of the people in Congress and most of the people on the Left, as to how change ultimately happens. Change finds its bed within a culture with big ideas that resonate with people. There has to be a sort of mystery and magic to the whole thing and so far the Occupy movement has been very good at operating on that deeper level. Somewhere along the line we will have to pass laws and we will need Barney Franks. But there are a lot of meta memes that we have to conjure up, and a lot of strategy that we have to perfect, and there are millions more young people that we have to inspire and recruit into our movement before we simplify the whole process into a cut-and-dry passing of a law. The Occupy movement has been committed to developing actions and strategies through consensus. How do the “tactical briefings” issued by Adbusters fit into that process? This tussle over what we should do next is something we should all get involved in. When we put out that call [in the January 25 “Tactical Briefing #25”] for 50,000 people to descend on Chicago [on May 1, ahead of the NATO summit], people in Chicago said, “You haven’t been talking