Bill LaCroix: Thank You, Howard Zahniser

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Thank You, Howard Zahniser

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL5lfsZi6Oo

Here's another music video attempt of mine.

The pictures and documents displayed are from my friend Stewart Brandborg's personal files and records. Brandy took over The Wilderness Society after Howard Zahniser's untimely death in 1964, a few months before Zahnie's eight-year Foggy Bottom slog to get a Wilderness Bill through our ever-unholy Congress was finally realized. It was Brandy's task to implement it against bureaucratic reluctance and intransigence within all the agencies that managed our public lands. The long story is a book that hasn't been written yet (I'm working on it!). For now, though, the short story is this: Brandy's dad (Guy M. Brandborg, pictured on his horse with Zahniser and AnnaVee Brandborg in the video) was a progressive forester from the Gifford Pinchot mold and his grandfather (on his father's side), was what you'd call a socialist back in the early part of the twentieth century when farmer's unions were strong. Socialism, as American as rhubarb pie, just as John-Birch-Society-style "libertarianism" is. Guess which one you can thank for the wilderness law, and for Democracy, too?

The Brandborgs were well-read, well-steeped in social altruism, and natural believers in Democracy (with a capital "D", not the FoxNews "fair and balanced" kind). With such a rich heritage, Brandy naturally gravitated toward Howard Zahniser and his epic campaign to get Congress to pass the singular law that forced Congress admit that humility was a good quality for them to confess they had a little of. After the Law was passed, Brandy pretty much wrote the book on grassroots organizing in the latter part of the twentieth century in order to get it implemented. Other laws, and other grassroots campaigns, followed the trails cut out by the original Wilderness Society organizers. Political hyperventilation from the extractors and their mouthpieces hasn't let up since, of course. It's been mean and incessant for decades, to the point where we can only bear witness to the inscrutable, nasty yet ultimately ephemeral Tea Party and MAGA phenomena here in the Rockies.

The Land always prevails. Be on the right side of it. Here's to the start of it all for those of us alive today. Here's to Howard Zahniser, Stewart Brandborg and here's to good ol' Democracy.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Why I Blog

Thoreau and Emerson had a discussion in May of 1846 about the Mexican War--our first war that set us on the course we still track today. Conquest of nation-states and the inevitable Imperialism that follows. Emerson counseled his friend that we can supersede the transgressions of a well-meaning State by the Muse. Thoreau wasn't so sure that the State was so well-meaning or that the Muse alone would be enough to supersede it. But he tried both the Muse and "other means" to our everlasting benefit. Civil Disobedience, in the American sense, has always been his child, in large part because he raised it to the level of Literature. "Other means" requires the Muse to be lasting and effective, and vice versa. How would anyone know what the hell you were talking about otherwise, let alone emulate what you're trying to do?

The problem with Progressives today, I think, is that we have been in the habit of letting other people--Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, Sun Myung Moon--tell our stories for us, people who do not mean us well. We haven't plugged our muse into our political discourse very much, and that's a big mistake. Mark Twain didn't make that mistake, and he was among the first American writers to use the new-fangled typewriter. Why do we children of Twain, Emerson and Thoreau make that mistake now with our new-fangled computers?

For all its faults, Corporate America understands that people are story-based critters, like it or not, and I think we progressives should like it. By definition, people make many important social (read: political) decisions based largely on who's the best storyteller. It’s in our nature, and Corporate Media is a classic example of how Nature abhors a vacuum. We’ve collectively created a cultural ‘narrative’ vacuum by allowing ourselves to be so easily entertained by—Corporate Media! And Nature hates that. She’ll allow the same garbage responsible for that vacuum (Corporate Media!) to be sucked in and to rattle around until it ruins our cognative motors before she’ll let that sad state of affairs stand. I'd ask any "America Firsters" stumbling on this blog and reading this far to consider: Rupert Murdoch is from Australia. Sun Myung Moon, now-deceased but whose creatures, the Washington Times and UPI still walk the face of the earth, was from Korea. The Koch Brothers, of course, were from the sheikdom of Texas. All of them were, and the living ones still are, so obscenely rich they apparently believed they own America simply because they paid for it, and we collectively let them define who among us are “real Americans”?! C'mon!

Although it helps to strive toward the goal, progressives don't have to be great writers, and I'm not claiming to be one. We simply have to acknowledge that we have the better stories and we’re sitting on our best ones. Our truest ones. Multi-national billionaires have better versions of American Liberalism and Progressivism than the real ones told by real Americans? Us? We shouldn't put up with that. Why do we?

Like any historic attempt, we need to find our Voice. Significant action will come only after our contemporary, progressive political muse matures, which it hasn't yet. Not to paint with too wide a brush, but too much of our positions have been framed in intellectual, almost-didactic prose, which, if you don't identify as an intellectual, means boring. Not all of it, just a whole lot of it, but never mind. If history's still a guide--and I hope it still is--there's hope, because when any progressive movement's Muse matures, it generally becomes the baseline for much of Western Civilization’s meaningful and therefore lasting literature. For example, "Mein Kampf" is still in print but I'll bet you'd have to turn over a lot of rocks to find someone to call it 'literature'.

So, this blog. It's a call, I suppose, to elevate our critical modern discussions out of Fox-news-landia back to where intelligent, caring Americans can find their feet and fight back, either with the Muse, by other means, or both. It’s not up to some politician to change the narrative. That’s up to us. So by definition we still have as good a chance as we ever had. Don't lose hope. It’s always been this way. At least in literate societies.

In other words, like Emerson advised and Thoreau partially agreed with: stories matter, and may the best Muse win.