Eugene man speaks up for Northwest anarchists
Author John Zerzan, 56, provides philosophical fuel for anarchy groups such as those seen at the WTO conference Saturday, December 11, 1999
By Bryan Denson of The Oregonian staff
EUGENE -- Trash fires lit downtown Seattle and World Trade Organization protesters still choked the streets 11 nights ago when John Zerzan boarded the Amtrak train for Eugene.
His work was over. He was headed home.
Behind him was a downtown full of broken windows, uprooted newspaper boxes, flaming Dumpsters. As peaceful protesters squared off with police, delaying the opening of the WTO's trade meetings, about 50 anarchists, half from Eugene, had raged through the city. Some spray-painted anarchy symbols and hit spots such as Nike Town, McDonald's, Bank of America -- corporate emblems of the technology they say is stealing society's passion and freedom.
"I was extremely heartened," said Zerzan, a leading philosophical influence among Northwest anarchists. The 56-year-old author admits joining his comrades in Seattle but won't say what actions he took. "At my age, the decades of nothingness, the decades of consumerism and the rising levels of deterioration and emptiness -- when people stand up to it and speak out against it and move against it, it's just thrilling."
After a lifetime of relative peace, one crazy week in Seattle turned Zerzan into the public face of anarchy. The fame is the sleepy-eyed scholar's reward for writing two books and countless essays on technology's disastrous implications for society.
These are intoxicating times for John Edward Zerzan. He has moved through past lives as a Woodburn altar boy, Berkeley peacenik and San Francisco cab driver to accept his role as a keeper of Eugene's counterculture flame. His younger comrades -- some impressed with his writing, others fascinated that he knows serial bomber Theodore Kaczynski -- have anointed him a somewhat reluctant spokesman.
Early passion for politics
Nothing radical bubbled in the Zerzan family font.
Zerzan's parents were devout Catholics from Nebraska who moved west seeking deliverance from the hardships of the Great Depression. They operated a Western Auto store in Woodburn. Dad was a conservative, Mom a Roosevelt Democrat. And John, the second of three children, developed an early passion for politics.
"He was always very serious," said Zerzan's big sister, 68-year-old Jackie Vincent, a retired artist for the Salem-Keizer school district. "I used to tell him to lighten up and not be so serious, he was just a kid. . . . He was just so concerned with the state of the world."
But in most ways, Zerzan was a typical '50s kid. He joined the Cub Scouts, camped with his family at the Oregon coast, went to Catholic school and played a little high school football at Mount Angel Prep. He graduated among 33 seniors in 1961 and headed off that fall to Stanford University.
Four and a half years later, Zerzan graduated with a degree in political science. As a "weekend runaway" to the University of California at Berkeley, he protested the Vietnam War.
Zerzan's only arrest came in 1966, when he and others took turns standing in front of trucks carrying napalm. "I felt very self-righteous," he said.
The young radical spent his years in the Bay Area working as a cab driver, carpenter's assistant and union organizer. He married, fathered a daughter and earned a master's degree in history from San Francisco State University. The marriage failed, and Zerzan moved to Los Angeles, where he entered a doctoral program at the University of Southern California.
On his own, he studied anthropology and the roots of technological society. In time, he grew convinced that technology is a tool to dominate the masses.
A modern primitive
Zerzan moved to Eugene in 1981 and several years later began to advocate a form of anarchy called "primitivism." By Zerzan's reckoning, mankind took a wrong turn 10,000 to 12,000 years ago when humans went from hunting and gathering their food to farming. He thinks that led to the technological world, which turned humans down a dangerous path.
Zerzan's reading convinced him that primitive humans weren't brutes but were smart, free of infectious and degenerative diseases, shared food, enjoyed leisure time and didn't get hung up on gender.
He lays the blame for many of today's problems -- escalating teen suicide, gunfire violence in schools, wide-scale use of antidepressant drugs -- on technological civilization and capitalism.
Zerzan lives alone in a one-bedroom home that's part of a housing co-operative. He owns no car, no credit cards, no computer. He writes longhand on a pad. His color television set rolled off production lines when Gerald Ford was president.
"He lives like a monk; he's just got nothing," his sister said. "He's got a futon on the floor and (until recently had) an old door on sawhorses for a desk, and I think he's got two pans to cook with. And that's the way he likes it."
Zerzan's primary transportation is a beat-up Schwinn three-speed bike. His books sell little, and he earns money baby-sitting. "I decided a long time ago I'd rather have time than money," he said.
Zerzan kept a low profile until January 1998, when he gave a lecture about technology -- with a nod to the Unabomber trial -- and 500 people showed up.
The Eugene scholar had read Kaczynski's 35,000-word manifesto and agreed with him that a technological society kills any chance for humans to live free or fulfilled. "Our correspondence uncovered our affinities . . . and he wanted to talk," Zerzan recalled. They first met in April 1997 at the Sacramento County Jail, then at least twice again.
Kaczynski has become a cult hero to a few anarchists. But some are frustrated that news reports keep connecting him to their mostly peaceful movement.
For a time, Eugene's anarchists seemed content to talk about revolution, to pass out leaflets on the streets and staff tables of literature in front of the public library.
Then one day, almost out of the blue, they cut loose.
Anarchy in Eugene
Zerzan was sitting at Allann Bros. coffee shop on June 18 when he smelled tear gas.
An estimated 300 people had marched through Eugene as part of a global anti-capitalist crusade. Some had broken windows of downtown businesses and stopped traffic.
Zerzan hadn't attended, but when he smelled tear gas, he bolted like an old fire horse. He pedaled his bike directly into a stand-off between protesters and Eugene police in riot gear.
The protest had raged for hours, and Zerzan declared it a victory. Fifteen anarchists went to jail.
Eugene's anarchists are perhaps 35 to 50 hard-core activists and many more sympathizers. Zerzan estimated their median age at 26. They tend to wear the black-hooded sweatshirts and bandannas fashionable among America's urban rebels.
Buoyed by the June 18 riot, some made plans to join their kindred in Seattle for an even bigger demonstration.
The World Trade Organization, the 135-nation body that sets international trade regulations, is hated by many environmentalists, human rights activists and labor organizers because they feel the organization puts profits ahead of the planet and its people. Months before the summit in Seattle, those groups planned to fill the streets with so many protesters it would literally prevent WTO delegates from reaching their meeting site.
Eugene's anarchists had no plans to play by the rules. They joined their anarchist comrades in Seattle on the morning of Nov. 30, blending in with tens of thousands of protesters.
When police shot the first cans of tear gas about 10 a.m., some of the anarchists dashed behind the lines and began vandalizing stores. They hit mostly large corporations, spraying graffiti on buildings and smashing windows.
"I saw these roving bands of anarchists all dressed in black before they started breaking windows, and I knew it was trouble," said Portland resident Xander Patterson, co-chair of the Pacific Green Party. "I think that they came with the intent to smash a few windows, but the police action just created the environment where they were given the unintended license to kind of go nuts."
The Downtown Seattle Association reported that damages cost merchants more than $2 million.
Peaceful protesters deserve sole credit for shutting down early meetings of the WTO, not the roving anarchists whose damage became the leading image for many news broadcasts, Patterson said.
However, Zerzan said broadcast images of the vandalism -- along with tear-gas clashes between police and protesters -- drew attention to the WTO.
It's the passion behind that militancy that stirs Zerzan's heart.
"I'm kind of incurably optimistic," he said. "I think we're gonna win. I'm convinced the system is gonna crumble and fall. The people are just going to rise up and put it away."
You can reach Bryan Denson at 503-294-7614 or by e-mail at bryandenson at news.oregonian.com.
-- Chuck0 http://flag.blackened.net/chuck0/home/
Dr. Laura is scared of this sig file +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Mid-Atlantic Infoshop http://www.infoshop.org/
Spunk Library http://www.spunk.org/ "All the anarchy you'll ever need, organized neatly and with reassuring authority."
-- 1998 Rough Guide to the Internet
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL AND LEONARD PELTIER! +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=