New College of California

As a New College of California alumnus and former editor at the New College Independent Alumni Association, I — along with many others — was dismayed when our alma mater was closed by the U.S. Department of Education in 2007. Given the level of fraud and mismanagement of federal funds by the trustees of the school, it was inevitable but still heartbreaking for those of us who contributed to its finer points. 

In January 2008,  I published Waco on Valencia: Distressing Truths About New College, a compilation of selected articles, letters, stories and reports about the demise of New College of California. The documents in this anthology, publicly unavailable anywhere else in published form, tell the inside story of how the cabal of trustees, that comprised a cult of mismanagement under Peter Gabel, slowly over a fourteen year period managed to destroy what the community of San Francisco had so painstakingly constructed as a labor of love since 1971.

While the story initially broke in the San Francisco Bay Guardian in the mid-1990s, it took a bit longer for the cronyism and corruption under Gabel and his sycophants to finally do the school in. For historians and former students and faculty, Waco on Valencia attests to both the noble dream and sordid reality of a once marvelous institution. A copy is available for viewing at the San Francisco History Center.

Marketizing the Olympics

While San Francisco deliberates subsidizing the America's Cup sailing regatta, the International Olympic Committee has recommended the removal of wrestling from the Olympic Games. As absurd as this seems to fans of one of the world's oldest sports and one of the sports in the original Olympic Games held in Athens in 1896, it is consistent with the marketization of all things public. Offering a rationalization for its decision, the IOC says it is based on television ratings and ticket sales.

A Labor of Love

In their report Growing A Resilient City, Solidarity NYC examines possibilities for collaboration in New York City's solidarity economy. The ideas and insights of interviewees, who are first responders to the crises confronting their communities, form a pragmatic vision grounded in values of cooperation, mutualism, ecological sustainability, social justice and democracy. This report about another world -- coexisting with the dominant way of doing things -- is their love letter to you.

PEN America Hypocrisy

When I first joined PEN America ten years ago, I was happy to pay my membership fee to support its work in advancing literature and defending free expression. But over the years, I've become disillusioned with the organization--partly due to its selective human rights agenda, and more recently due to its profound lack of judgment in choosing its new executive director.

As with far too many NGOs, PEN America has elected to wear blinders when it comes to human rights violations by the United States and its militarism projected through institutions like NATO and militarily dependent states like Israel. While I was disheartened by PEN International's former vice president Nadine Gordimer's bias when it came to Israel, the recent choice by PEN America's trustees to install the former U.S. State Department warmonger Suzanne Nossel as its new executive director is the final straw.

As an experienced advocate for neoliberal coercion to achieve American hegemony, Nossel has taken an aggressive pro-war stance over the last decade, including the US invasion of Iraq and the NATO bombing of Libya. When working as a Hillary wannabe at State, Nossel fought hard at the UN Human Rights Council as an apologist for Zionist crimes against humanity in Palestine. If this is the best PEN America can do, then they can do without my support.

A World of Their Own

For the first twelve years of this century I resided in the wealthiest county in California. Marin county, the peninsula opposite San Francisco and sharing with it the Golden Gate Bridge, is also a heavy hitter in the philanthropic world.

All that wealth combined with a prevalent politically correct ethic makes serious money available to greens, gays, new-agers and indigenous rights advocates. When people like Winona LaDuke and Rebecca Adamson needed seed money to launch major initiatives, they went to Marin.

In a way, I suppose one might say the hippie ethic of the 1960s still reverberates there, albeit in a modified form. While the hippies of San Francisco started free medical clinics, communes and soup kitchens funded by rock concert benefits featuring Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Grateful Dead, the yuppies of Marin fund NGOs by playing the stock market.

As one might expect, this difference in funding has societal implications. First and foremost, the capitalist orientation of the nouveau riche Marin philanthropists restricts their perception of social change. They are reformers, not revolutionaries. The system has been good to them, and like Obama, they don't want to challenge it. While not all of them are part of the 1%, many of them aspire to be. Thus, while it is good they support people like LaDuke, it is more telling that they give generously to Adamson, who, like them, is a staunch advocate of the capitalist system.

The fact that system is what is destroying the environment and indigenous societies worldwide is merely one of those dissonances the Marin elite rationalize over long lunches at the exclusive bistros and wine bars they frequent. While they have the capacity to influence the world at large, they live in a world of their own.

Mesnak

Hamlet might seem like an odd theme for an Indigenous feature film, but Mesnak just walked away with the 2012 Best Film, Best Actor and Best Actress awards at the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco. As the debut film for Yves Sioui Durand (Huron-Wendat), a Montreal theatre director, Mesnak confonts the unsavory aspects of ongoing colonialism in Canada, like identity loss and cultural corrosion in Native communities, through one family's tragic story.

Subversives

For young people who might think FBI spying on activists began under the Bush Administration, Seth Rosenfeld's book Subversives will help them understand that the FBI has always viewed dissent as a criminal activity to be opposed by both covert and illegal means. Documenting the FBI's collusion with mainstream media and local police to discredit student radicals at the University of California Berkeley during the 1960s Free Speech Movement, Rosenfeld shines a light on the anti-democratic careers of such nefarious characters as J. Edgar Hoover, Ronald Reagan and Edwin Meese.

As the logical extension of the House Un-American Activities Committee witch hunts against Hollywood screenwriters and actors, the Counterintelligence Program of the FBI against Civil Rights and Free Speech figures formed the backdrop to Reagan's rise to power. By showing how Hollywood FBI informer Reagan and his Alameda County prosecutor associate Meese helped undermine freedom of expression, Rosenfeld illuminates the standing injustice of the Department of Justice in harassing activists that persists to the present.

By battling the department through decades of freedom of information requests, Rosenfeld has provided us with documentation of the lengths the federal government will go to to prevent freedom from prevailing. If there is one book to put on your Christmas list, this is it.