Sunday, May 24, 2009
IV 1 Video, parts 1 & 2
There are some YouTube videos on the riots. Here's the beginning of a series on "IV 1" ...
IV I, part 1:
IV 1, part 2:
DBOA 1, part 2
IV I, part 1:
IV 1, part 2:
DBOA 1, part 2
Labels: 1950s, 1960s, Isla Vista, IV1, UCSB
Saturday, February 07, 2009
"A Citizen's History" Review
D.J. Palladino reviewed Carmen's book in the latest edition of the SB INDEPENDENT:
"Carmen Lodise and Friends Release Isla Vista: A Citizen’s History," SB INDEPENDENT, February 5, 2009, By D.J. Palladino
... Lodise, an activist and newspaper editor during the ’70s and ’80s.. [gives] a political history beginning with Spaniards landing on the Chumash, segueing into the grandees of ranching, early (futile) oil explorations, and a conspiratorial-tinged saga of development, a story that fingers some big dead white men, like editor T.M. Storke, oil mogul Samuel Mosher, and former chancellor Robert Huttenback [no, it was Cheadle]. Though its zoning and financing scandal accusations are surprisingly inconclusive, the story nonetheless feels both juicy and fishy.
Lodise offers essays on various uprisings, the bank’s demise (by Das Williams’s dad Malcolm), and, more scrupulously, limns I.V.’s political climate following the riots, a tale of much woe, in which the university, despite its own sponsored report’s recommendations, balked at fruitful involvement. It does slightly better today, Lodise admits...
In the book, Lodise invokes the hard work that produced, if not an incorporated city, fervent citizen involvement lasting more than two decades, a record of activism that created parks, public health facilities, a food co-op, and big fun, like nude-ins and joint-rolling contests. He also revives the voices of people we needed and still need: like playwright, professor, and activist Bob Potter; politically committed journalist and candidate Carrie Topliffe; artist and shopkeeper Al Plyley; and Lodise himself.
What his book doesn’t manage well, however, is the city’s complicated cultural life, ignoring things as disparate but important as off-beat cultural destinations like Biko House and public traumas such as the actions of David Attias, a disturbed young man who drove into a crowd of Isla Vistans and tragically killed four, but awakened, finally, the conscience of the university. Surfing, rock music, theater, poetry, even businesses born in I.V., like Kinko’s, get little shrift. The worst sleight, however, is Halloween, which, it has been well argued, did as much as firebrand Yippees to create the culture of protest there. With roots back to the late 1950s, Halloween bonfires, suspended during the psychedelic years, are truly the strongest tradition most I.V.ers remember. Lodise gives it one page.
It’s crucial to recall that Isla Vista is an adopted city. It’s a transient pleasure, partly because absent landlords rent 96 percent of the town out to students who spend maybe four years there, then leave. Though the town looks much as it did in the late 1960s, except the I.V. Bookstore, it is completely different. Few businesses last, and fewer citizens remain, including Lodise who lives in Mexico and Arizona today. The world he describes was what he saw; his adopted era.
You can’t blame Lodise for encouraging youth to continue speaking truth to power, to band together before I.V. becomes a theme park. But I can’t help thinking about Fellini’s sailors [in Satyricon (1968)], offered the corpses of their elders to chew. Ironic that it’s now the boomers providing the eat-or-die flesh. This generation needs to know the past, sure, but not just 1970s legacies. A more balanced book may help us all move forward on all the available winds.
------------------------------
For full text, please go to:
The Santa Barbara Independent New History of I.V. Published
------------------------------
Carmen replied:
DJ,
Thank you for the mostly positive review of our book. I acknowledge my "citizen's history" does short the vibrant cultural aspects of Isla Vista. However, I recall a piece you wrote in the Independent a couple of years ago on that topic, which leads me to believe that it may be you, not me, who should write that history.
A couple of other reviews:
“The book is gorgeous and vividly authentic, a grass-roots people's history in the tradition of Howard Zinn."
-- Bob Potter, Prof. Emeritus, UCSB
Co-author, The Campus by the Sea Where the Bank Burned Down
“This is outstanding! The legacy of Isla Vista owes you a tremendous debt of gratitude and on a personal level, so do I.”
-- Cloe Mayes Yocum,
UCSB student, mid-1970s
"The book reminds me a lot about how much I owe Isla Vista. I think someone could never really know me without knowing what our community was/is like."
-- Glen Lazof,
Isla Vista Community Council, 1983-84, I.V. Park District GM, ~1985-93
Incidentally, the book is available at Chaucer's Books, the I.V. Food Co-op, both UCSB and Isla Vista book stores and, within the next couple of days, at Amazon.com.
Regards,
Carmen Lodise
"Carmen Lodise and Friends Release Isla Vista: A Citizen’s History," SB INDEPENDENT, February 5, 2009, By D.J. Palladino
... Lodise, an activist and newspaper editor during the ’70s and ’80s.. [gives] a political history beginning with Spaniards landing on the Chumash, segueing into the grandees of ranching, early (futile) oil explorations, and a conspiratorial-tinged saga of development, a story that fingers some big dead white men, like editor T.M. Storke, oil mogul Samuel Mosher, and former chancellor Robert Huttenback [no, it was Cheadle]. Though its zoning and financing scandal accusations are surprisingly inconclusive, the story nonetheless feels both juicy and fishy.
Lodise offers essays on various uprisings, the bank’s demise (by Das Williams’s dad Malcolm), and, more scrupulously, limns I.V.’s political climate following the riots, a tale of much woe, in which the university, despite its own sponsored report’s recommendations, balked at fruitful involvement. It does slightly better today, Lodise admits...
In the book, Lodise invokes the hard work that produced, if not an incorporated city, fervent citizen involvement lasting more than two decades, a record of activism that created parks, public health facilities, a food co-op, and big fun, like nude-ins and joint-rolling contests. He also revives the voices of people we needed and still need: like playwright, professor, and activist Bob Potter; politically committed journalist and candidate Carrie Topliffe; artist and shopkeeper Al Plyley; and Lodise himself.
What his book doesn’t manage well, however, is the city’s complicated cultural life, ignoring things as disparate but important as off-beat cultural destinations like Biko House and public traumas such as the actions of David Attias, a disturbed young man who drove into a crowd of Isla Vistans and tragically killed four, but awakened, finally, the conscience of the university. Surfing, rock music, theater, poetry, even businesses born in I.V., like Kinko’s, get little shrift. The worst sleight, however, is Halloween, which, it has been well argued, did as much as firebrand Yippees to create the culture of protest there. With roots back to the late 1950s, Halloween bonfires, suspended during the psychedelic years, are truly the strongest tradition most I.V.ers remember. Lodise gives it one page.
It’s crucial to recall that Isla Vista is an adopted city. It’s a transient pleasure, partly because absent landlords rent 96 percent of the town out to students who spend maybe four years there, then leave. Though the town looks much as it did in the late 1960s, except the I.V. Bookstore, it is completely different. Few businesses last, and fewer citizens remain, including Lodise who lives in Mexico and Arizona today. The world he describes was what he saw; his adopted era.
You can’t blame Lodise for encouraging youth to continue speaking truth to power, to band together before I.V. becomes a theme park. But I can’t help thinking about Fellini’s sailors [in Satyricon (1968)], offered the corpses of their elders to chew. Ironic that it’s now the boomers providing the eat-or-die flesh. This generation needs to know the past, sure, but not just 1970s legacies. A more balanced book may help us all move forward on all the available winds.
------------------------------
For full text, please go to:
The Santa Barbara Independent New History of I.V. Published
------------------------------
Carmen replied:
DJ,
Thank you for the mostly positive review of our book. I acknowledge my "citizen's history" does short the vibrant cultural aspects of Isla Vista. However, I recall a piece you wrote in the Independent a couple of years ago on that topic, which leads me to believe that it may be you, not me, who should write that history.
A couple of other reviews:
“The book is gorgeous and vividly authentic, a grass-roots people's history in the tradition of Howard Zinn."
-- Bob Potter, Prof. Emeritus, UCSB
Co-author, The Campus by the Sea Where the Bank Burned Down
“This is outstanding! The legacy of Isla Vista owes you a tremendous debt of gratitude and on a personal level, so do I.”
-- Cloe Mayes Yocum,
UCSB student, mid-1970s
"The book reminds me a lot about how much I owe Isla Vista. I think someone could never really know me without knowing what our community was/is like."
-- Glen Lazof,
Isla Vista Community Council, 1983-84, I.V. Park District GM, ~1985-93
Incidentally, the book is available at Chaucer's Books, the I.V. Food Co-op, both UCSB and Isla Vista book stores and, within the next couple of days, at Amazon.com.
Regards,
Carmen Lodise
Friday, January 30, 2009
Bank Burning Video
A YouTube video on the burning of the Isla Vista branch of the Bank of America:
Labels: 1970, Bank of America, Isla Vista
Sunday, December 28, 2008
"To The Bank!"
Every once in a while, former Isla Vistans reconnect here, many with stories of their times during the campus demonstration, Isla Vista riots, and the community building years. Here's one recently come in from Davo:
"My friend Steve and I lived in IV during the time of the riots. Steve was on the 'front lines' the night the bank burnedin IV I. He remember the burning dumptsters being rammed through the doors of the bank, and the subsequent fire lighting up the night sky. It was a thing of beauty. Later on,he was one of those who strolled through it. He couldn't find anything more interesting than coffee creamer at this point, so he didn't take anything. Nothing ever came of it, so apparently he wasn't caught on film.
"Once the bank caught fire, and the police cars were pelted with rocks and left, then came the Greyhound busses full of police. There was a very large line of police in full riot gear with shields. It reminded Steve of that movie, '300 Spartans.' (the original). They began to advance, and everyone panicked and ran. Some people were falling and in danger of being trampled. But then they regrouped, and started 'firing' rocks and some bottles at the blue line. The police had advanced so powerfully, seemingly arrogant and ruthless, certainly overpowering and seeming invincible. But as the 'missiles' found their mark, one cop after another would fall. Soon the line broke, and they ran for cover and left. For that one night, of course, there was no 'law and order' in Isla Vista. No civil authorities, police or fire, could enter, and of course they gave up. It could be said, for one night Isla Vista was not a part of the U.S. It seceded from the Union.
"One night in particular, Steve was with a group of about a dozen guys, roaming the streets looking for police cars to pelt with rocks. They wore kerchiefs over their faces, soaked with vinegar, supposedly this helped with the tear gas. Anyway, Steve made a tactical mistake and got separated from the group, and suddenly found himself isolated on the outskirts of town. A couple cop cars spotted him. He turned and ran across a large field for dear life. He could see his shadow stretched out far in front of him a long ways from the search lights shining on him. Shots were being fired at him. Of what he didn't know, and didn't stop to ask! All he could do was keep running. Finally he came to a fence and hopped it. He came to the back door of a house and knocked on it, and told the people there he was running from the cops so they let him in. What a time it was, what a culture, that this was considered appropriate behavior. After a few minutes, he left and crawled to the next house, and then to the next house, house by house, heading towards the beach.
"Then he worked his way down the beach heading towards the dorms, as he was a freshman. A helicopter was searching the beach and shining its spotlight. When the light came near him, he crouched down in the crevice between the cliff and the sand. Somehow, someway, he made it safe back to the dorm.
"On another occasion, he was staying with a friend in IV, in an apartment which formed an 'L', with the front door opening to the inside, not to the street. A fellow protester, as was called a 'brother' back then, not connoting race, asked if he could hide in Steve's pad, which he agreed to. Then the protester had a Molotov cocktail with a half gallon wine bottle. The police would drive through the streets in dump trucks, firing tear gas and perhaps rubber bullets or... The protester lit his Molotov and heaved it at a dump truck going by, and he and Steve quickly ran into the apartment amid shots being fired. Steve hid under a bed. He could see the police walking through the bushes, shining their flashlights into the apartment. He knew if they saw him the police would break down the door and get him. But he hid successfully.
"In the mornings, the air was filled with remnants of smoke and tear gas, and dumpsters were smoldering. Groups dared not gather, and some people went to class. But in the evenings, the battle was on...
"I believe it was in mid-April 1970, there was a concert in the large park on the East outskirts of town (not the park by the bank)(or was it an athletic field, I don't remember). There were 5,000 people there; everybody had a great time. But all good things must end, as did the concert. 5,000 people were just mulling around quietly, not really knowing what to do, not really wanting to leave. Overhead, Sheriff Joel Honey in his helicopter was threatening the people to disperse. This infuriated Steve. He did not want to see this go down as a victory for Joel Honey. So at the top of his(very, very loud) lungs, he yelled, 'TO THE BANK!' Silence. Then, somewhere in the crowd, someone repeated, 'TO THE BANK!' Then another. And another. Pretty soon the whole crowd was chanting, 'TO THE BANK!' and off they went! A surge of 5,000 people off to the bank! Thus began what came to be known as 'IV II' and ultimately the tragic fatality."
"My friend Steve and I lived in IV during the time of the riots. Steve was on the 'front lines' the night the bank burnedin IV I. He remember the burning dumptsters being rammed through the doors of the bank, and the subsequent fire lighting up the night sky. It was a thing of beauty. Later on,he was one of those who strolled through it. He couldn't find anything more interesting than coffee creamer at this point, so he didn't take anything. Nothing ever came of it, so apparently he wasn't caught on film.
"Once the bank caught fire, and the police cars were pelted with rocks and left, then came the Greyhound busses full of police. There was a very large line of police in full riot gear with shields. It reminded Steve of that movie, '300 Spartans.' (the original). They began to advance, and everyone panicked and ran. Some people were falling and in danger of being trampled. But then they regrouped, and started 'firing' rocks and some bottles at the blue line. The police had advanced so powerfully, seemingly arrogant and ruthless, certainly overpowering and seeming invincible. But as the 'missiles' found their mark, one cop after another would fall. Soon the line broke, and they ran for cover and left. For that one night, of course, there was no 'law and order' in Isla Vista. No civil authorities, police or fire, could enter, and of course they gave up. It could be said, for one night Isla Vista was not a part of the U.S. It seceded from the Union.
"One night in particular, Steve was with a group of about a dozen guys, roaming the streets looking for police cars to pelt with rocks. They wore kerchiefs over their faces, soaked with vinegar, supposedly this helped with the tear gas. Anyway, Steve made a tactical mistake and got separated from the group, and suddenly found himself isolated on the outskirts of town. A couple cop cars spotted him. He turned and ran across a large field for dear life. He could see his shadow stretched out far in front of him a long ways from the search lights shining on him. Shots were being fired at him. Of what he didn't know, and didn't stop to ask! All he could do was keep running. Finally he came to a fence and hopped it. He came to the back door of a house and knocked on it, and told the people there he was running from the cops so they let him in. What a time it was, what a culture, that this was considered appropriate behavior. After a few minutes, he left and crawled to the next house, and then to the next house, house by house, heading towards the beach.
"Then he worked his way down the beach heading towards the dorms, as he was a freshman. A helicopter was searching the beach and shining its spotlight. When the light came near him, he crouched down in the crevice between the cliff and the sand. Somehow, someway, he made it safe back to the dorm.
"On another occasion, he was staying with a friend in IV, in an apartment which formed an 'L', with the front door opening to the inside, not to the street. A fellow protester, as was called a 'brother' back then, not connoting race, asked if he could hide in Steve's pad, which he agreed to. Then the protester had a Molotov cocktail with a half gallon wine bottle. The police would drive through the streets in dump trucks, firing tear gas and perhaps rubber bullets or... The protester lit his Molotov and heaved it at a dump truck going by, and he and Steve quickly ran into the apartment amid shots being fired. Steve hid under a bed. He could see the police walking through the bushes, shining their flashlights into the apartment. He knew if they saw him the police would break down the door and get him. But he hid successfully.
"In the mornings, the air was filled with remnants of smoke and tear gas, and dumpsters were smoldering. Groups dared not gather, and some people went to class. But in the evenings, the battle was on...
"I believe it was in mid-April 1970, there was a concert in the large park on the East outskirts of town (not the park by the bank)(or was it an athletic field, I don't remember). There were 5,000 people there; everybody had a great time. But all good things must end, as did the concert. 5,000 people were just mulling around quietly, not really knowing what to do, not really wanting to leave. Overhead, Sheriff Joel Honey in his helicopter was threatening the people to disperse. This infuriated Steve. He did not want to see this go down as a victory for Joel Honey. So at the top of his(very, very loud) lungs, he yelled, 'TO THE BANK!' Silence. Then, somewhere in the crowd, someone repeated, 'TO THE BANK!' Then another. And another. Pretty soon the whole crowd was chanting, 'TO THE BANK!' and off they went! A surge of 5,000 people off to the bank! Thus began what came to be known as 'IV II' and ultimately the tragic fatality."
Labels: 1970, Isla Vista, IV1, IV2, riots
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Mexico City Massacre 1968
In the summer of 1968, Mexico was experiencing the birth of a new student movement.
( Photo courtesy of NPR )
But that movement was short-lived. On Oct. 2, 1968, 10 days before the opening of the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, police officers and military troops shot into a crowd of unarmed students. Thousands of demonstrators fled in panic as tanks bulldozed over Tlatelolco Plaza.
Government sources originally reported that four people had been killed and 20 wounded, while eyewitnesses described the bodies of hundreds of young people being trucked away. Thousands of students were beaten and jailed, and many disappeared. Forty years later, the final death toll remains a mystery, but documents recently released by the U.S. and Mexican governments give a better picture of what may have triggered the massacre. Those documents suggest that snipers posted by the military fired on fellow troops, provoking them to open fire on the students...
National Public Radio has a very good audio retrospective, along with images, which also sheds new light on the massacre in Tlatelolco Plaza. Go to:
NPR: Mexico Massacre 1968
( Photo courtesy of NPR )
But that movement was short-lived. On Oct. 2, 1968, 10 days before the opening of the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, police officers and military troops shot into a crowd of unarmed students. Thousands of demonstrators fled in panic as tanks bulldozed over Tlatelolco Plaza.
Government sources originally reported that four people had been killed and 20 wounded, while eyewitnesses described the bodies of hundreds of young people being trucked away. Thousands of students were beaten and jailed, and many disappeared. Forty years later, the final death toll remains a mystery, but documents recently released by the U.S. and Mexican governments give a better picture of what may have triggered the massacre. Those documents suggest that snipers posted by the military fired on fellow troops, provoking them to open fire on the students...
National Public Radio has a very good audio retrospective, along with images, which also sheds new light on the massacre in Tlatelolco Plaza. Go to:
NPR: Mexico Massacre 1968
Labels: 1968, Mexico City, student movement, Tlatelolco
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