In Honor of Martin Luther King

/ Curt Mekemson / 1 Comment

It is easy to forget what America was like before the Civil Rights Movement changed how African-Americans are treated in the US. I’ve touched on this subject in my articles about UC Berkeley and the Free Speech Movement. Prejudice was not a problem relegated to the South.

Today, in honor of Martin Luther King, I would like to visit the South of 1968, however. I was serving as a recruiter for the Peace Corps at that time, working through out the Southern United States. It was the year Martin Luther King was shot.

The issue of skin color had faded away when I worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa from 1965-67. My travels through the South as a recruiter brought me face to face again with the reality and tragedy of prejudice.

Supposedly, I was recruiting in the ‘New South,’ a South that had made it beyond the ugliest parts of discrimination. But one didn’t have to dig deep to find old scars or even open wounds.

A few years earlier, George Wallace was announcing his schools would not be integrated, Lester Maddox was waving his pick ax handle, students from Berkeley were participating in the Freedom Rides and young people were being murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi for registering black voters.

One of our black recruiters had grown up in Alabama and described the experience. I was still mastering ‘Southernese’ so her statement lost a little in the translation but I report it as I heard it.

“When I was growing up,” she had reported, “I always had to step off the sidewalk and into the gutter whenever the Polish came walking along.”

“Wow,” I had replied, trying to comprehend what it would be like to have to debase yourself in such a way and at the same time wondering about the problem with the Polish that I had never heard about before.

“I never knew that there was a problem in the South with the Polish,” I observed.

“Polish,” she had replied in an irritated voice, “P, O, L, I, C, E.” Read my lips.

Properly chastised my mind made the leap. I thought back to Berkeley and remembered my feelings about police on campus. I wondered what it would be like to grow up fearing the very people who were supposed to protect you. How long it would take for those feelings to leave you… if they ever could? How could such experiences do anything other than teach you hatred?

Not long after that my wife, Jo Ann, and I were recruiting at the University of North Texas in Denton along with a black recruiter. The three of us had gone out for breakfast at a local restaurant.

I had noticed that people became quiet when we walked in. Gradually conversations resumed. I really didn’t think much about it. A family with young children was in the booth next to us. Suddenly a little four-year-old head poked up and was staring over the seat at us, all eyes.

“Mama, there is a nigger sitting with those people,” she had announced to her mother and everyone else in the restaurant in a loud, clear voice. From the ‘mouth of an innocent babe’ the prejudice of generations was repeated.

Jo Ann and I were also to learn that prejudice went both directions. One of our assignments was to recruit at Black Campuses. We had accepted readily. Why not?

When we began our recruitment efforts, we quickly realized that we were less than welcome, that there was a barely concealed resentment about our presence. No one yelled at us or threatened us, but the looks and mumbled side comments spoke volumes.

We were guilty of being white. It wasn’t who we were, what we were committed to, or what we had done; it was the color of our skin. It was a powerful lesson on the unthinking, disturbing nature of prejudice. A few weeks later the hatred it spawns would lead to one of America’s greatest tragedies.

It was in the spring of 1968 and we were recruiting at the University of West Virginia in Morgantown. It was our second visit to the campus and we felt like we were returning to see old friends. Students were excited about the Peace Corps and eager to sign up.  We had set up our booth and were well into persuading students to leave the country when the news came.

Martin Luther King had been shot and killed.

For the second time in our relatively short lives (John Kennedy’s assassination was the first), we were struck by instant grief and anguish for someone we had never known, a man who had stood as a symbol of hope that the hatred and bigotry in America could be overcome, and that it could be done without violence.

The preacher of non-violence, the Christian black man with a golden voice and stirring words had been shot down in cold blood. Another hero was dead, destroyed because he believed that he could make a difference, shot down because he had dared to dream. And we were left with the question: why?

Today, the fact that a black man can serve as President of the US, speaks to how far we have come as a nation and honors the efforts of Martin Luther King.

Still, as King would remind us if he were alive today, the struggle against prejudice is not over, and may never be. Hate crimes are a daily occurrence in our world; people continue to discriminate against others because of their religion, ethnicity, sex, economic status and color of skin.

The best way to honor Martin Luther King, and the thousands of others who have sacrificed to make this a fair and just world, is to continue the struggle.

Holding a Police Car Hostage: UC Berkeley’s 1965 Free Speech Movement

/ Curt Mekemson / 5 Comments

Jack Weinberg, creator of the statement "Never trust anyone over 30," was arrested for raising funds to support Civil Rights efforts on the UC Berkeley Campus in the fall of 1965. Students surrounded the police car and held it hostage.

In the fall of 1965, the UC Berkeley Administration declared that the Bancroft-Telegraph Free Speech area was closed and that there would be no more organization of off-campus Civil Rights demonstrations at Berkeley. Student organizers of the various community efforts reacted immediately.

These were not young adults whose biggest challenge had been to organize pre-football game rallies. Some, like Mario Savio, had walked the streets of the South registering black voters and risking their lives to do so.

In the summer of 1964 three of their colleagues had been shot dead and buried under an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Many had cut their political eye teeth four years earlier in the anti-HUAC demonstrations in San Francisco and had participated in numerous protests against racial discrimination throughout the Bay Area since. (HUAC was the House Un-American Activities Committee, a hold over from the McCarthy era.)

The student organizers understood the value of demonstrations, media coverage and confrontation and had become masters at community organization. They were focused in their vision to the degree they were willing to face police and be arrested for their beliefs.

The Administration wasn’t nearly as focused. Liberal in nature and genuinely caring for its students, it utilized a 50’s mentality to address a 60’s reality. Its bungling attempts to control off campus political activity combined with its inability to recognize the legitimacy and depth of student feelings would unite factions as diverse as Young Republicans for Goldwater with the Young People’s Socialist League.

It eventually led to the massive protests that painted Berkeley as the nation’s center of student activism and the New Left.

Over the next three months I would spend a great deal of time listening, observing and participating in what would become known world-wide as the Free Speech Movement (FSM). As a political science major, I was to learn much more in the streets than I did in the classroom.

What evolved was a classic no win, up-against-the-wall confrontation. The Administration would move from “all of your freedoms are removed,” to “you can have some freedom,” to “let’s see how you like cops bashing in your heads.” The Free Speech leaders would be radicalized to the point where no compromise except total victory was acceptable.

Student government and faculty solutions urging moderation and cooperation would be lost in the shuffle. Ultimately, Governor Pat Brown would send in the National Guard troops and Berkeley would take on the atmosphere of a police state.

I found myself being radicalized in the process as well although I never reached the point of moving beyond issue to ideology. It was no more in my nature to be left-wing than it had been to be right-wing. However, I would move across the dividing line into civil disobedience.

Within hours of the time that Dean Katherine Towle sent out her ultimatum to campus organizations, the brother and sister team of Art and Jackie Goldberg had pulled together activist organizations ranging in orientation from the radical to conservative and a nascent FSM was born.

Shortly thereafter the mimeographs were humming and students were buried in an avalanche of leaflets as they walked on to campus. I read mine is disbelief. The clash I had predicted at the student leader meeting a year earlier had arrived. There was no joy in being right.

In an era before social networks and cell phones, FSM organizers relied on mimeographed fliers and word of mouth to build instant support. The above flier is one I saved in my files on the Free Speech Movement.

As soon as it became apparent that the Administration had no intention of backing off from its new rules, the FSM leadership determined to challenge the University. Organizations were encouraged to set up card tables in the Sather Gate area to solicit support for off campus causes.

I had stopped by a table to pick up some literature when a pair of Deans approached and started writing down names of the folks manning the tables. Our immediate reaction was to form a line so we could have our names taken as well. The Deans refused to accommodate us. The Administration’s objective was to pick off and separate the leadership of the FSM from the general student body.

A few days later I came out of class to find a police car parked in Sproul Plaza surrounded by students. The police, with encouragement from the Administration, had arrested Jack Weinberg, a non-student organizer for CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) who had been soliciting support for his organization.

Someone had found a bullhorn and people were making speeches from the top of the police car while Jack sat inside. I situated myself on the edge of the fountain next to the Student Union and idly scratched the head of a German Short Haired Pointer named Ludwig while I listened. (Ludwig visited campus daily and played in the fountain. Later, in Berkeley-like fashion, the fountain would be named for him.)

A scanned photo of Ludwig from Berkeley's student newspaper.

Eventually I stood up and joined those on the edge of the crowd thereby becoming a part of the blockade. It was my first ever participation in civil disobedience. It was a small step. There would be plenty of time for more critical thinking if the police showed up in force.

Being only semi-radical, I did duty between classes and took breaks for eating and sleep. Eventually, after a couple of days, the FSM negotiated a deal with the Administration. Jack was booked on campus and turned loose, as was the police car. A collection was taken up to pay for minor damages the police car had sustained in the line of duty while serving as a podium.

Next Blog: The Police and National Guard occupy Berkeley’s campus

 

On the Edge of Radicalism… Berkeley’s 1965 Free Speech Movement

/ Curt Mekemson / 1 Comment

A major confrontation erupted on the UC Berkeley Campus in 1965 known worldwide as the Free Speech Movement. At stake was the right of students to be actively involved in the Civil Rights movement and other political issues of the time.

While I was playing in Puerto Vallarta, my nephew, Wayne Cox, posted the video of a Campus Cop using pepper spray on students at UC Davis. The students were involved in a nonviolent protest supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement.

It was a strong indictment of the policeman, a bully using his power of position to intimidate and physically strike out at the protestors.

Those who oppose the Occupy Movement rushed to classify the incident as a random act of a disturbed individual. It was bad PR and the video had gone viral. But the use of violence to counter protest movements has a long history in America, dating all the way back to the Revolutionary War and the Boston Massacre.

I was to experience incidents similar to Davis during student protests at UC Berkeley in the mid 60s. I’ve already written a two blogs about the roots of the protest (see below).

I returned to UC in the fall of 1965 excited about my senior year. Two of my former dorm mates, Cliff Marks and Jerry Silverfield, had agreed to share an apartment. Prices were high. Landlords had a captive student population to exploit. We ended up with a small kitchen, bathroom, living room, and one bedroom. Things were so tight in the bedroom that Cliff and I had a bunk bed. I would later wonder why this was superior to dorm life.

Jerry (on the right), Cliff and I in our small apartment.

We christened the apartment by consuming a small barrel of tequila Cliff had brought back from his summer of sharpening Spanish skills in Mexico.

While we were recovering from our well-deserved headaches the next morning, UC’s Administration moved decisively to eliminate off campus political activities from being initiated on campus.

There would be no more organization of Civil Rights demonstrations and no more money collected to support political candidates or causes. Controversial speakers would not be allowed on campus without tight administrative control.

The Bancroft-Telegraph entrance free speech area was out of business, closed down, caput. That incredible babble of voices advocating a multitude of causes would be heard no more.

The Administration’s actions were a testament to the success of the 1960s Civil Rights struggle taking place in the Bay Area. It wasn’t that the activists wanted change; the problem was they were achieving it.

Non-violent civil disobedience is a powerful tool. Base your fight on legitimate moral and political issues; use the sit-in and the picket line to make your point. When the police come, don’t fight back; go limp. If they beat you over the head, you win. Sing songs of peace and justice; put a flower in the barrel of the weapon facing you.

It is incredibly hard to fight against these tactics. People tend to get upset when they see nonviolent protestors being beaten with nightsticks in national and international media. It gives power to the powerless.

Major businesses being targeted for their discriminatory practices in the Bay Area, the Sheraton Hotel, United Airlines and Safeway, blinked. Each would alter their practices.

One business that didn’t back down was the Oakland Tribune, owned by William Knowland, a conservative Republican, former Senator from California and leader of California’s Republican Party.

As the protests in the surrounding community became more successful, the power structure being attacked struck back. Calls were made to the Regents, the President of the University system and the Chancellor at Berkeley. ‘Control your students or else’ was the ominous message.

The Regents, President and Chancellor bowed to the pressure.

Some members of the Regents and Administration undoubtedly agreed with the businesses being challenged and saw the protesters as part of an anarchic left-wing plot. Others may have believed that the students’ effectiveness would bring the powers that be down on the university. Academic freedom could be lost. Some likely felt that the activities were disruptive to the education process and out-of-place on a college campus.

One thing was immediately clear; the Administration woefully underestimated the reaction of the leaders of the various organizations and large segments of the Campus population to its dictum. Possibly the administrators believed they were dealing with a small, unpopular minority, or maybe they just needed to believe: the outside pressure was so great it didn’t matter what the students believed or how they reacted.

Next blog: I become involved in ‘civil disobedience.’

Proud to be a UC Berkeley student, I display my sweatshirt.

Sunny Puerto Vallarta

/ Curt Mekemson / 1 Comment

Beautiful sunsets are frequent in Puerto Vallarta. Throw in a palm tree and you have a post card type photo. This shot is looking south across the Bay of Bandaras toward the small village of Yalapa.

OK, I’ve been bad. Six weeks of travel before Christmas brought my blogging to a halt. I resolve to be better during 2012. In fact, other than the often-promised, rarely-achieved resolution of beating my body into shape, it is my only New Year’s resolution.

Puerto Vallarta is up first for 2012. With dire warnings of drug wars from friends and family, we spent two of our six weeks of pre-Christmas travel there. All we saw related to the wars were young soldiers armed with automatic weapons wandering through the hotel property. It was enough.

Our three-year-old grandson Cody loaded his imaginary machine gun and fired off rounds at them. It dismayed his mother and amused us.

Peggy loves Puerto Vallarta. I like it much better since the ubiquitous and obnoxious time-share salesmen have, at least temporarily, disappeared from the streets. If you want a perspective, imagine ten used car salesmen per block, each dedicated to selling you an over priced used car you are expected to share with 50 other families.

The town has been a major attraction for Americans ever since Richard Burton and Elizabeth Tailor filmed Night of the Iguana there in 1963. Taylor’s extramarital affaire with Burton guaranteed massive media coverage and the beginning of the tourist trek southward.

Puerto Vallarta makes its living off tourists. This becomes particularly obvious on days when the massive cruise ships are in town. Still, the city has its charm.

I am particularly fond of the Isla Rio Cuale and the Malecon, a downtown walkway that fronts on the ocean and is filled with sculptures. Sunsets on the Bay of Bandaras are also worthy of mention.

Shopping can be fun; a number of fine crafted items are for sale plus there are the usual Mexican crafts. The latter are found in abundance at the port and the downtown Market. Bargaining is expected. Prices are increased to account for the practice. Tourists feel they have driven a hard bargain and shop owners walk away with a profit.

Taking a river taxi to small village of Yalapa south of Puerto Vallarta provides both diversion and a small adventure. We saw blue whales and dolphins on our way there this year.

Peggy and I visit Puerto Vallarta every other year for one to two weeks. The following photos hopefully capture what we like about the city and its environs.

Puerto Vallarta has done an excellent job of placing sculptures along the Malecon, an attractive car-free walk-way that fronts the Bay of Bandaras downtown.

Another attractive downtown Puerto Vallarta site is Our Lady of Guadalupe Church of and its unique tower.

I shot this photo of pigeons in flight at a small town square.

The young Cody who fired his imaginary machine gun at the Mexican soldiers prepares to fire a very real water gun at me as I am catching a nap. Both his mother and grandmother were encouraging this reprehensible behavior.

Quaint streets and walkways make a walking tour of Gringo Gulch a must. This is where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton lived when they were filming the Night Of the Iguana and had their notorious affaire.

Peggy and I were at a restaurant called Tapas in Gringo Gulch with our friends Tom and Beth Lovering when we found this great parody of the Marilyn Monroe photo. I was particularly taken with it because it resembled one of the holiday cards I design and draw for friends and family each year. It's featured below. I am sure you will spot the resemblance.

What can I say? Happy New Year?

There are lots of great beaches in Puerto Vallarta but be prepared to be visited by a steady stream of vendors. They come with the territory.

The Public Market next to the Rio Cuale is filled (brimming over) with small shops featuring Mexican Crafts and inexpensive local restaurants. We also found this attractive lady skeleton that Peggy is matching smiles with.

Restaurants, a museum, crafts and arts are featured on the island located in the middle of the Rio Cuale. We also found this intriguing sculpture.

Restaurants, a museum, crafts and arts are featured on the island located in the middle of the Rio Cuale. We also found this intriguing sculpture/fountain.

My friend Tom Lovering can't imagine why anyone would go to Sr. Frogs with so many good local restaurants in Puerto Vallarta but I managed to get him to pose with the frog.

Peggy took this photo of a rather attractive wood canoe on the beach. Note how it has been carved from one log.

I took this photo of Mexican crafts at the small village of Yalapa which is south of Puerto Vallarta and can only be reached by water. I love the bright colors and can't resist the small boggle-head creatures, in this case, turtles.

The Marvelous Creatures of Piedras Blancas

/ Curt Mekemson / 9 Comments

Sleep over? Each year upwards to 60,000 Elephant Seals visit the Beaches of Piedras Blancas in Central California to mate, shed and have pups. "Are they dead?" I heard a young boy ask his mother. Let's put it this way, when your body is made up of one to five thousand pounds of blubber, you don't move around much.

Pop Quiz: What creature can weigh over two tons, have a two-foot long nose, dive up to 5000 feet, spend eight to ten months of the year on the open sea, migrate upwards to twelve thousand miles, leave a track like a two-ton caterpillar, and mate with dozens of winsome females on or around Valentines Day?

If you guessed the adult male Elephant Seal, you guessed right.

These intriguing animals were all but hunted to extinction for their valuable oil in the late 1800s. Today their numbers are estimated at 170,000.

Close to 10 percent consider the beaches of Piedras Blancas on the central coast of California their home, or rookery if wish to use the technical term. A couple of dozen showed up unexpectedly in 1990. Today their population is pushing 17,000.

Peggy and I stopped by for a visit on our way home from San Diego last week. Seeing the seals in their natural habitat is an incredible experience that we highly recommend. You can learn more about these animals and the best time to visit from Friends of the Elephant Seal at www.elephantseal.org.

Cameras are a must. We took over a hundred photos during our visit. I’ve posted some of the more amusing below. I couldn’t help adding appropriate captions.

"I don't care how much you pray for a new fur coat for Christmas, I am not listening." The Elephant Seals don't mean to entertain us but watching their antics is sure to bring a smile.

 

There is always pleasure in scratching a really bad itch. Check out the two Elephant Seals below. Pure ecstasy.

"Ah, that feels good."

 

"And this feels even better!"

 

"Go that way." Ever suffer from a feeling of rejection? This certainly seems to be the case here. Although Elephant Seals are social animals that crowd together on the beach, they can also be quite territorial, especially during mating season.

 

"Mother always said to use sunblock." Using their flippers, Elephant Seals are often seen flipping sand up over their body. Peggy took this rather artistic photo. Note the seal outlined in the back. The purpose for the dirt bath is indeed to provide protection from the sun. Elephant Seals spend 8-10 months a year migrating in the cold waters of the North Pacific traveling as far north as the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. Most of their time is spent under water diving from 20 minutes to an hour and surfacing for only three minutes. No wonder the sun feels hot!

 

I caught the flipper action in this photo.

 

"My Chiropractor suggested this new back stretching exercise."

 

How could anyone resist this toothy grin?

 

"I am the king!" The size of your nose and the loudness of your roar matters in the Elephant Seal world. Big males become quite feisty during mating season as they gather harems of up to 50 females. As one might imagine, battles between two ton creatures can turn rather nasty. If your nose is big enough, up to two feet long, and your roar loud enough, other males may choose to let you have your way with out a battle, however.

 

Sleeping cheek to cheek. If that isn't a look of contentment, I've never seen one.

 

"After a hard day of sleeping, I like to lay back and put my feet up in the air."

 

If you came across these tracks without knowing who made them, you would probably vacate the premises.

 

"Did you hear the story about the Rabbi, the Priest and the Baptist Minister?"

 

"I just love the smell of fish breath." Actually, these guys fast for weeks on end while on shore. There may not be much fish breath left by the time they are ready to return to the ocean.

Berkeley on Edge… the 60s

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

Within a week of my arrival at Berkeley, I was President of Priestly Hall, my dorm. Following my stint as Student Body President at Sierra College, I decided to jump into student politics at the University. The dormitories were new so the residents were new. The fact that I was a Community College transfer made little difference.

Student politics seemed dull and almost frivolous compared to the real thing, however. What truly fascinated me about Berkeley was the palpable sense of being involved in the events of the day.

Fellow students had actually signed up for and gone on Freedom Rides in the South. An active effort to end discriminatory hiring practices was underway in the Bay Area and organizations such as the Congress of Racial Equality were recruiting students to support their efforts.

I was drawn toward these issues and the call to action tweaked my interest. Limiting the future of a potential Martin Luther King because of who his parents were went beyond being counterproductive. It was stupid; we all lost.

But I wasn’t ready to take up a picket sign. This was my first year at Berkeley and my hands were full in struggling with classes and eking out time to be with Jo Ann. There were also numerous responsibilities to fulfill in my role as dorm president such as organizing parties, collecting rolls of toilet paper to throw during Cal football games and learning the football fight songs.

I did strike one tap hammer blow against the machine, however. We were expected to participate in the annual Ugly Man Contest. Its purpose was to raise money for charity by having someone or thing really ugly as the dorm’s representative in competition with other dorms, fraternities and sororities. People would vote by donating money (normally pennies) to their favorite ugly man. In addition to being fun, it was on the top of the Dean’s list as an acceptable student activity.

I proposed that our ‘Ugly Man’ be an unfortunate Joe College Student whose computer card had been lost by the Administration. Consequently, he no longer existed. We made up a casket and wandered about campus in search of poor Joe.

It was a small thing but it reflected a growing unease I had about the alienation created by assembly line education where numbers were more important than individuals. Apparently the student body wasn’t ready for the message; a popular bartender representing a fraternity walked away with the prize.

While my concerns over student alienation were evolving, the administration was monitoring off-campus student activism with growing concern. The University perceived its primary objectives as carrying out research and preparing young people to become productive members of American society. These weren’t bad goals but there was little room in the equation for students seeking social and political change… in Mississippi, in Oakland or on campus.

But ‘the times they were a changing,’ as Bob Dylan sang. A young President in Washington was calling on the youth of America to become involved, racial equality seemed attainable in the United States and people the world over were yearning for and demanding freedom. It was easy for idealistic young Americans to believe we were at the dawning of a new age and natural to want to be involved in the transformation.

Had the students restricted their political efforts in the early and mid sixties to the far off South, the eruption of conflict on the Berkeley Campus may not have taken place. But they chose local targets as well.

When the students marched off campus to picket the Oakland Tribune, Sheraton Hotel, United Airways and Safeway over discriminatory hiring practices, they were challenging locally established businesses with considerable power. Not surprisingly, these businesses felt threatened and fought back.

Rather than deal with the existing discrimination, they demanded that the University, local authorities, the state government and even the Federal government do whatever was necessary to reign in the protesters.

Their arguments for the crackdown were typical of the times. A few radical off-campus agitators with Communist connections were working in conjunction with left leaning professors to stir up trouble. The participating students lacked mature judgment and were naively being led astray. The vast majority of students were good law-abiding kids who just wanted to get an education, party, and get a paycheck.

The University was caught between the proverbial rock and a very hard place. The off-campus political activism was creating unwanted attention. Public dollars could be lost and reputations tarnished. There was also a justifiable fear of reprisal from the right.

The ugliness of McCarthyism was still alive and well in America. Only a few years before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had held hearings in San Francisco in its ceaseless search for Commies. UC had been a target.

HUAC created a deep paranoia and distrust within society and may indeed have constituted the most un-American type of activity ever perpetrated on the American public. Clark Kerr, the University President, and others had worked hard to protect and restore the academic freedom on campus that loyalty oaths and other McCarthy-like activities had threatened. Student activism might refocus Right Wing attention on the Berkeley Campus.

My greatest insight into the mindset of the Administration was when the Dean of Students called student leaders together to discuss the growing unrest on campus. Our gathering included members of the student government and presidents of the resident halls, fraternities and sororities. Noticeable in their absence were student representatives from off campus organizations such as CORE, SNCC, Young Democrats, Young Republicans and other activist groups.

We sat in a large room in a huge square; there must have been at least 40 of us. I was eager to participate and imagined an open discussion of the issues.

A Dean welcomed us, thanked us for agreeing to participate, and then laid the foundation for our discussion. A small group of radical students was disrupting the campus and organizing off-campus activities such as picketing and sit-ins that were illegal in nature.

While the issues being addressing were important, there were other, more appropriate means available for solving them that didn’t involve Berkeley. The Administration had been extremely tolerant so far but was approaching a point where it might have to crack down for the overall good of the University.

The Administration wanted our feedback as student leaders. What did we think was happening, how would our constituencies react to a crack down, and how could we help defuse the situation? We were to go around the room with each student leader expressing his or her view. I expected a major reaction… hopefully a protest or at least a warning to move cautiously, to involve all parties in seeking some type of amenable agreement.

The first student leader stood up. “The radical students are making me extremely angry,” he reported. “I resent that a small group of people can ruin everything for the rest of us. The vast majority of the students do not support off-campus political action. I believe the student body would support a crackdown by the Administration. You have my support in whatever you do.”

I could not believe what I was hearing. Was the guy a plant, preprogrammed by the Administration to repeat the party line and set the tone for everyone else? If so, he was successful. The next person and the next person parroted what he had said. I began to doubt myself.

Normally, I am quite good at reading political trends and sensing when a group leans toward supporting or opposing an issue. My read on what was happening at Bancroft and Telegraph was that the majority of the students were empathic with and supportive of the causes the so-called radical students were advocating.

The Martin Luther Kings of the world were heroes, not bad guys, and their tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience were empowering the powerless. Sure, the majority of the students were primarily concerned with getting through college. To many, an all night kegger and getting laid might seem infinitely more appealing than a sit-in. But this did not imply a lack of shared concern.

Or so I believed. Apparently, very few of the other participants shared in my belief. Concerns were raised but no one stopped and said, “Damn it, we have a problem!”

As my turn approached I felt myself chickening out. I was the new kid on the block, wet behind the ears. What did I know?

Acceptance in this crowd was to stand up and say, “Yes, everything you are talking about is true. Let’s clamp down on the rabble rousers and get on with the important life of being students.” And I wanted to be accepted, to be a part of the establishment. I stood up with shaking legs.

“Hi, my name is Curt Mekemson and I am the president of Priestly Hall,” I announced in a voice which was matching my legs, shake for shake. This was not the impression I wanted to make. As others had spoken, I had scribbled some notes on what I wanted to say.

“I believe we have a very serious problem here, that the issues are legitimate, and that most students are sympathetic. I don’t think we should be cracking down but should be working together to find solutions. Now is not the time to further alienate the activists and create more of a crisis than we presently have. I believe it is a serious mistake to not have representatives from the groups involved in organizing off campus activities here today.”

I was met with deadly silence. A few heads nodded in agreement, but mainly there were glares. “Next,” the Dean said. No yea, no nay, no discussion. I was a bringer of bad tidings, a storm crow. But it wasn’t ‘kill the messenger.’ It was more like ‘ignore the messenger,’ like I had farted in public and people were embarrassed.

After that, my enthusiasm for student government waned. I should have fought back, fought for what I believed in, fought for what I knew deep down to be right. But I didn’t. I was still trying to figure out what to do with 15 books in Poly Sci 1. I had a relationship to maintain on campus and a mother fighting cancer at home. The dark, heavy force of depression rolled over my mind like the fog rolling in from the Bay.

Finally I decided that something had to go and that the only thing expendable was my role as President of the dorm. So I turned over the reins of power to my VP and headed back to Bancroft Library. Politics could wait.

Next blog: John Kennedy Is Shot Down on the Streets of Dallas.

UC Berkeley, the Mass Production of College Graduates… The 60s

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

I arrived on the UC Berkeley campus in September of 1963 something of a country boy. I walked around in awe. Every corner had something new.

Telegraph Avenue became the center of my off-campus life. Exotic smells emanated from a dozen different ethnic restaurants while numerous languages assaulted my ears.

I quickly discovered the Café Mediterraneum. In an era before Starbucks made coffee houses safe by mass producing and sanitizing them, Café Med was an original. It was a microcosm of Berkeley, filled with offbeat characters, esoteric discussions and great coffee. I became addicted to both the cappuccino and the atmosphere.

I developed an even greater addiction for the Cody’s bookstore, which was located just across Telegraph. Started on a shoestring by the Cody family in the 50s, it had become one of America’s premier bookstores by the mid-sixties.

I was equally fascinated by the ever-changing kaleidoscope of soapbox oratory provided at the south entrance to the campus on the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph. During any given hour, half a dozen speakers could be found there espousing as many causes. I considered it high entertainment and would sit on the steps of the Student Union and listen during breaks from my studies.

Over one lunch period, I noted in a letter to my mother, I listened to a student who had spent her summer working in the South registering voters, a black South African talking about apartheid, a socialist railing against the evils of capitalism, a capitalist railing against the evils of socialism, and a Bible thumper detailing out the many paths Berkeley students were following to hell.

Many of the speakers urged that there was more to college life than studies, football and parties. Change was in the wind and we should be part of it. Work for fair housing in Berkeley; oppose the unfair hiring practices at Safeway; sign up to help on a political campaign. Join CORE, SNCC, SLATE, SDS, or a world of other acronyms. I struggled to take it all in, absorb it through my pores. It certainly wasn’t Kansas, Dorothy, nor was it Diamond Springs, Placerville or Sierra College.

To simplify my first year I opted to live in a college dorm. I would have a room, a bed and someone to feed me. The University assigned me to Priestly Hall, which was ideally located a block away from campus and a block away from Telegraph Avenue.

Three other dorms, one for men and two for women, comprised our corner of the universe. Co-ed living accommodations were still in the future. Strict House Mothers existed to enforce the rules and protect their charges. Women were only allowed on the first floor of the men’s residence hall. Slipping one up to your room was an expellable offense.

My sixth floor room came complete with a roommate, Clifford Marks. Cliff was a slightly built young man with bright red hair, freckles and a mischievous personality. Later we would share an apartment together. Like me, he was a political science major.

As for life at Berkeley, I wanted it all. There were student politics to jump into, classes to master, bookstores to explore, cappuccino to consume, a thousand causes to sort out and a love life to support. (The woman I had met and fallen in love with at Sierra College, Jo Ann Griffith, had also chosen Berkley.)  Moderation was not an option.

I did understand that my primary reason for being there was to learn and I quickly discovered that learning was defined differently than at Sierra. First I had to find my classes. Berkeley seemed like a maze to me. Single buildings held more classrooms than were found on Sierra’s campus and each building held its own secrets. The Life Science building, for example, displayed enough jars of pickled fetuses to stop the heart of a pro-lifer and give me nightmares.

While the Social Science buildings weren’t nearly as interesting, I was searching for a political science class in Wheeler Hall when I came upon a string of marble encased urinals in the basement capable of accommodating the whole beer soaked population of a Oakland Raiders’ football game. I decided there was enough marble to refurbish the Parthenon, which led my mind to contemplate penning a new poem, ‘Ode to a Grecian Urinal.’ Stream of conscious thinking can be dangerous.

I finally found my political science class and discovered I had over 1000 classmates. It was located in a large auditorium I had passed by because my mind hadn’t been able to comprehend a classroom of that size.

The professor, Peter Odegard, was a star in the field of political science and frequently received standing ovations for his stirring lectures. In another life he had served as President of Reed College in Oregon.

His lectures inspired me but there was scant chance I would ever meet the man. Personal contact was through graduate teaching assistants, folks struggling to complete their own education while being paid minimum wages to interact with us.

I had one class that was so large we had to sit in another classroom and watch the professor on television. This was mass education on a grand scale. The University’s job, according to Clark Kerr the University President, was the mass production of educated people to go out and fill slots in society.

It was easy to be overwhelmed. I was assigned 15 books in one class and actually thought I was expected to buy and read each one in detail. I was a fast reader but not that fast, nor that wealthy. It would take a year to master the art of skimming, buying old books, using commercially prepared notes and pursuing all of the other tricks of the trade that getting a higher education entailed.

For all of that, there was an excitement to the classes that was lacking at Sierra. I might be sharing my professor with a thousand other students but he or she might also be a person who was a confidante of Presidents. Did I learn more than I had in community college or gain deeper insights? I actually don’t think so, but I did have a sense of being part of what was happening in the world and this made what I was learning seem more relevant.

Life quickly evolved into a routine that primarily consisted of attending classes and studying. Mainly I lived in the Bancroft library with occasional forays over to Café Med.

Friday nights were reserved for Jo Ann. We struggled to spend time together, to find moments of privacy and to bridge the gaps that our new life was creating. Even though we had gone off to the University together and now lived less than a mile apart, we saw less of each other than we had at Sierra.

Dates, given my super tight survival budget, normally consisted in going out for pizza at Laval’s or a hamburger at Larry Blake’s. Later, when we both turned 21, beer was added to the menu. On rare occasions, we would go to a movie.

Sunday mornings, in lieu of church, I would go for a hike up in the beautiful hills behind Berkeley. There was still solace to be found in the woods.

Next blog: Berkeley on the Edge of Revolt. Today’s Occupy Wall Street movement shares much in common with the nation wide student movement of the 60s. This series of blogs is devoted to the role that UC Berkeley played in the initiation and evolution of the 60s revolution.

Held at Gun Point… Training for Berkeley in the 60s

/ Curt Mekemson / 2 Comments

The man rested his rifle on the hood of my 56 Chevy. His message was clear. I wasn’t going anywhere

My summers between college were spent working for American Laundry driving a laundry truck between Placerville and Lake Tahoe. In addition to having one of the country’s most scenic routes to travel over each day, the job paid for my college education.

At the beginning of my summer between Sierra and Berkeley, Roger Douvers, the owner of the business, asked if I wouldn’t like to move up to the Lake and work for his son-in-law, John Cefalu. John had taken over a laundry that Douvers had owned, sold and then reclaimed because of back payments.

As an incentive, Roger threw in free rent in an old trailer next to the laundry.

I was happily sleeping in my trailer one morning when the laundry trucks roared to life.  I jumped out of bed. Over sleeping was no excuse for being late. I looked accusingly at my alarm clock. It said 6 AM, an hour before we normally went to work. My watch concurred.

More than a little confused, I looked out my window. An armed man stood in front of my door while other men with rifles were posted around the laundry.

Not having a phone, there was no way to contact Cefalu or Douvers. I decided it was time to vacate the premises.

I threw on my clothes, sidestepped the gunman and jumped into my car. The guard immediately repositioned himself as a hood ornament and looked threatening. Guys with guns can do that.

“Don’t be worried, Curt,” a familiar voice told me.

“Right,” I thought as I checked out the tough looking guy. I turned my head and spotted Woody, our lead driver. “What in the hell is going on?” I demanded.

“We’ve taken over the laundry,” Woody replied casually.

The next question followed naturally.  Who in the heck constituted ‘we?’ Woody had an answer for that, too.

“I work for the people who Douvers screwed when he took the laundry back,” he told me. “We’re here legally and these armed men are professional security guards to protect our interests.” Apparently Woody had been quietly arranging a coup while taking Roger’s money.

“I am leaving now,” I informed Woody.

“I don’t think so,” Woody replied. “Relax, it will all be over in a few hours and you can go to work for us.”

I was beginning to feel like I had been caught up in a Grade B movie.

“Woody, you are not going to shoot me,” I said with a lot more confidence than I felt. “Tell the man to get out of my way.” I was irritated to the point of irrationality. I turned on the car and started rolling forward. At the last possible moment, when it was clear that I intended to keep going, Woody motioned for his man to move. I was glad they couldn’t hear my sigh of relief.

Once away from the laundry, I shoved the gas pedal down and made a dash for Cefalu’s. My trip was over in a flash but it was not nearly as quick as the trip back. I knocked on the door of the dark house and was surprised to find Roger open it in his pajamas. He’d come up from Placerville the night before.

“What’s wrong Curt,” he said sounding a little alarmed. Obviously I wouldn’t show up at 6:30 A.M. to wish him a good morning.

“Your laundry has been taken over by armed men,” I blurted out and then quickly filled in the details. Roger responded by saying some very unpleasant things. He grabbed his jacket, yelled for his daughter to call the sheriff, and told me to jump in his truck.

There are three red lights between where Cefalu lived and the laundry. We managed to run all three. Our truck screeched to a halt in front of the office and Roger jumped out with me close behind.

“Fine,” I thought to myself. “I just escaped from this place and here I am back providing muscle back up for an angry man who is probably going to pop someone in the nose and get us both shot.”

Fortunately there were a lot of words before any action and the Sheriff’s deputy showed up with siren blasting. It would all be settled in court. I was still in one piece. My experience at facing armed men would make a good story.

And, unknown to me at the time, it would help prepare me for being a student at Berkeley.

Next blog: The strange world of Berkeley in 1963.

How Being a Minority, Facing Nuclear Oblivion and Becoming Green Can Change Your World View: the 1960s

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

I graduated from high school in 1961 as a budding Young Republican. College changed my perspective.

I spent my first two years at Sierra, a small, rural community college nestled in the rolling foothills east of Sacramento. I then transferred to the University of California at Berkeley, the flash point of worldwide student unrest in the 60s. Sierra liberalized my view of the world; Berkeley radicalized it.

Three things happened at Sierra that changed my political views. The first took place in the first hour on my first day at school.

On Being a Minority

The faculty had arranged for a speaker to kick off the school’s welcome and orientation. He was a Chinese man who stood up in front of a sea of white faces and smiled like he had access to secrets we didn’t.

“You think I look funny?” our speaker asked with a grin.  His question was greeted by nervous laughter. As naive as we were, we still knew enough to be made uncomfortable by such a question.

“Well I think you look funny,” he went on to much more laughter, “and there are a lot more of me who think you look funny than there are of you who think I look funny.”

It jolted my perspective. The Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum in the South in the early 60s and I was sympathetic with its objectives. Providing people with equal rights regardless of race, sex, religion or other arbitrary factor seemed like the correct thing to do. I also had a vague concept that we all lose when we limit a person or group’s ability to succeed because of prejudice.

But I had never perceived of myself as being a minority. Instead, I belonged to an exclusive club. In 1961 white males dominated the US and the US dominated the world. It was easy to assume that this was how things should be.

The fact that it might be otherwise put a new spin on the issue. What if we ended up in a situation where we were in the minority and lacked power? I added enlightened self-interest to my list of reasons for supporting equal rights. They might be the only protection we had.

On Facing Nuclear Oblivion

The second event was one of the most scary our generation would face. All of our lives we had been raised under the threat of a nuclear cloud. We were constantly treated to photographs and television coverage of massive, doomsday explosions and their tell-tale clouds.

Growing up in the 50s meant growing up paranoid. In elementary school, we even practiced drills where we would hide under our desks and assume a fetal position for when the big bomb hit.

Atom bombs, which could destroy whole cities and kill millions of people, weren’t massive enough. We needed bigger bombs and we needed more. It was important that we could kill everyone in the world several times over and blast ourselves and the rest of life into times that would make the so-called Dark Ages seem like a Sunday picnic in the park.

None of this was our fault, of course. We had the evil Russian Communists and their desire to rule the world to blame. “We will bury you!” Khrushchev threatened and we believed him. Losing a soul to communism was worse than losing a soul to the devil. Better Dead than Red was the motto of people whose fingers were very close to the nuclear button.

The closest we have come to the nuclear holocaust took place during two terrifying weeks in late October 1962.  I, along with most of the student body and faculty at Sierra College, sat tethered to the radio in the Campus Center as our nation teetered on the edge of nuclear abyss.

It all came about because a cigar chomping right-wing dictator we liked was replaced by a cigar chomping left-wing dictator we didn’t. It was known as the Cuban Missile Crisis and has its own headlines in the history books as being a highlight of the Cold War.

Castro and his revolution had provided a toehold for Communism in the western Hemisphere. Jack Kennedy waged a crusade to get rid of him that included an alleged assassination attempt using Mafia hit men and the invasion fiasco known as the Bay of Pigs.

Castro called on Khrushchev for help and Russia responded by offering nuclear missiles. This made the folks in Washington rightfully nervous. Kennedy set up a blockade of Cuba. It was here that things got dicey. Fingers hovered over the launch buttons.

Fortunately, Khrushchev blinked. Aided by promises that the US wouldn’t invade Cuba and that we would remove our missiles from Turkey, Russia retrieved its nuclear missiles and we entered our decades long stare-down with Castro.

From that point on in my life, I became convinced that here had to be solutions to solving international differences beyond blowing each other off the map. Nation states rattling sabers was one thing; nation states rattling nuclear bombs and other forms of mass destruction was something else.

On Becoming Green

Another concept I was introduced to at Sierra was environmental activism. For this, I owe thanks to Danny Langford. Dan liked to talk and could fit more words into a minute than I could five. One Monday morning he proudly informed me that he had spent his weekend pulling up surveyor stakes in a new development called El Dorado Hills.

“You did what?” I asked in a shocked and disapproving voice. Pulling up surveyor stakes was malicious vandalism.

“I pulled up stakes to discourage a developer from building houses,” he responded in greater detail assuming it would make sense to me.

It didn’t. Why would someone want to discourage a developer? My Republican roots were offended to the core.

“Why would you pull a destructive stunt like that?” I wanted to know as I pictured several days of surveyor work going down the drain.

“It’s a beautiful area,” Dan responded, “covered with oak trees and grass. They are going to cut down the trees, plant houses, and pave over the grass.”

Suddenly what Dan was talking about made sense. I wasn’t about to join him on one of his destructive forays but his comments made me think about how fast we were paving over California.

Many of the wooded areas I had wandered as a kid a few years earlier had already met their demise at the business end of a bulldozer. Progress was how this destruction was defined and progress was a sacred American tradition. For the first time in my life, I questioned its value.

Possibly there were other costs that needed to be considered and weighed in our blind rush toward the future. It would be nine years before I made the leap into being a full-time environmental activist but the seed had been planted.

So here I was in mid-1963, part internationalist, a future environmentalist, and a Civil Rights advocate. I had definitely made a left turn out of the right lane. I figured I was ready for Berkeley.  Not.

Next blog: I am held at gunpoint.

The Revolution of the 60s and the Occupy Wall Street Movement

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

“If you can remember the 60s, you weren’t there.”

Robin Williams

“We have to be careful not to allow this (the Occupy Wall Street movement) to get legitimacy. I am taking this seriously in that I am old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s…”

Peter King, Congressional Chair of the Homeland Security Committee

“Don’t trust anyone over 30.”

Jerry Weinberg during Berkeley’s Free Speech Moment in 1965

The forgotten 60s of Robin Williams is a legacy of the hippie era. Tune in and drop out became the rallying cry. Flower children flocked to San Francisco, Timothy Leary became the high priest of LSD and the Grateful Dead emerged out of the Bay Area. Ken Kesey, Neal Cassidy and the Merry Pranksters hopped on their psychedelic bus and toured America. “It is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius,” the Fifth Dimension sang and some 500,000 people trekked to Woodstock to see if it were true.

I skipped the drug-induced haze of the hippies, for the most part. I assume Peter King did as well. Our similarities end there. While he worked his way through private colleges in the East, became a lawyer and joined the National Guard, I went to UC Berkeley, majored in International Relations and joined the Peace Corps.

The challenge to become involved was what captured my passion in the 60s. “If you are not a part of the solution, you are part of the problem,” Pogo asserted.

John Kennedy kicked off the decade with his “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Later, his perspective was broadened by Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream,” Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” and Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” as well as others.

Like tens of thousands of young people across America, I felt that the times were changing, that we could make a difference, that there were solutions to international relations beyond endless war, that America could live up to her dreams of equality, that we could reverse and repair the damage we were doing to our earth, and that there were motivations to action beyond greed.

In other words, what was happening then with the civil rights, human rights, environmental and anti-war movements of the 60s, bears a strong resemblance to what is happening with today’s Occupy Wall Street Movement.

Then, like now, a massive, nation-wide grass-roots movement was founded on the concept of creating positive change, young people played a major role, and the establishment fought back. Those with wealth and power saw us as a direct threat to their ability to gain more wealth and power.

We were labeled as leftists, radicals and communists even though the vast majority of us were not. We were told we were anti-American bent on destroying the nation. And the police and the National Guard were called out to ‘restore order.’

Thus it is when the Peter King’s of the world describe participants of the Occupy Wall Street movement as “anarchists” who are “a bunch of 1960 do overs trying to create chaos” and that “ they have no sense of purpose other than a basic anti-American tone,” I feel compelled to respond.

What happened in the 60’s is relevant to what is happening today.

But the relevance lies in the vision of creating a better nation, not in Peter King’s McCarthy like posturing. I am proud of what we able to accomplish in the 60s.  I am proud of how so many young people of the 60s and 70s would go on to create positive change throughout their lives. And I am proud of the folks who are now participating in the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

Over the next two weeks I will revisit the early to mid-60s and reflect on how these years impacted my life and thousands of others who shared my experiences. And I will strive to make those experiences relevant to today.

I will start with how a small community college in the Sierra foothills changed my world-view and then move on to look at UC Berkeley in 1963. Next I will provide an inside look at Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement in 1964 and give an overview of the nation’s first major anti-Vietnam War protest at Berkeley in 1965. I will conclude with my thoughts on how the Berkeley experience reflected and influenced what was happening in the nation.