the class struggle is alive and well ...

[John Gulick]

... here in Santa Cruz County the class struggle is alive and well.
Neither orthodox leftists nor post-modernists have the mental equipment
to recognize this. The former hold on to antiquated notions of who is
in the working class, what they would regard as an ideal world if only
the veil of bourgeois ideology was stripped away, and what forms of
action and organization will get the job done. Post-modernists deny that
the working class conceives of itself as such, and even call into question
whether, in these so-called post-industrial times, the working class 
objectively exists. (OK, I'm caricaturing a battery of complex of positions
in order to make a polemical point).

Here in Santa Cruz County one notable segment of the working class is white,
male, aged 20-35, born and raised locally. They drive around in big-ass
jacked-up trucks with halogen lights and "Bad Boy club" decals, work part-time
temporary jobs in construction and landscaping, and are into various and
sundry "rad sports" -- surfing, snowboarding, skateboarding, ATV'ing. The
big "political" campaign of late is intimidating and beating up the burgeoning
yuppie population (Santa Cruz being just "over the hill" from IPO ground zero)
who are taking over their favorite surfing and ATV'ing spots with their
longboards and mountain bikes. Another favorite pasttime is cruising downtown
in their modified trucks and harrassing liberal upper-middle class college
students, who are readily identifiable by their imported Guatemalan clothing
and "free Leonard Peltier" buttons, and symbolically connected to the
extortionary rents that landlords charge in these parts.

This is a much more typical form of the class struggle in the U.S. today, as
opposed to the population at large getting up in arms about a semi-fascist
hijacking of a formal democratic election. The class struggle is alive and
well, although it is a far cry from the Wobblies' defense of a proletarian
work-and-live culture at the turn of the century ...

John Gulick