the class struggle is alive and well ...

[Chuck0]

John Gulick wrote:
> 
> ... 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: You should check out the most current issue of Alternative Press
Review, which I co-edit with fellow LBOer Tom Wheeler. We have an
article in this issue from Rac Traitor magazine titled, "White Trash
Culture and the Loss of Slack."

It's about poor white trash culture in the South around the time of the
Civil War, but I think it relates to your observations about Santa Cruz
County.

Chuck0