I saw it at the Museum few weeks ago, and I didn’t realize it was going to be over so soon. But if you happen to be in Santa Rosa today, it’s your last chance. It provides a fascinating history of communists in Sonoma County, including the Jewish immigrants who started the Petaluma chicken industry, the Apple Pickers Strike of 1935, vigilante responses such as the one reported in the Press Democrat image here, the Sonoma County residents who were hauled up before investigation committees in Congress, and of course Jack London’s time in the county, during which time he wrote The Iron Heel.
The vigilante episode was particularly chilling. A group of socialists was kidnapped and brought to City Hall where they were instructed to kiss the flag. Three of the five refused, and they were tarred and feathered and paraded around the city. But they continued to organize, or try to anyway, afterward.
I know Eureka has a history of socialists, not necessarily communists, being elected early in the 20th century. I wonder what else would turn up in a Humboldt County exhibit. It would probably include something about Jack London who got into a bar fight in Eureka with one of the logger barons. Somebody around here made a post about it, but I can’t find it.
Addendum: I found the reference to Jack London in this Times Standard article about Old Town’s history containing this paragraph:
“In the early days of Eureka there was a favorite little drinking bistro across from the Vance Hotel named The Oberon,” Waters wrote. “Marble floors, tapestries, pictures of beautiful girls in the raw, etc. Writer Jack London, a confirmed Socialist and Stanwood Murphy, a conservative Republican met in the Oberon. They argued over politics and started throwing punches. The bartenders locked the doors and they fought for over an hour. After the fight they were both in the hospital for a couple of days licking their wounds.”
26 comments
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September 26, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Anonymous
Didn’t the North Coast Journal do something about communists in local history?
September 26, 2010 at 5:21 pm
MarkW
I am really sorry I missed this exhibit–this is the first I heard of it. Still, good to know that a county museum would deal with a topic like this.
September 26, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Anonymous
What about earth first?
September 26, 2010 at 11:04 pm
Eric Kirk
What about them?
September 27, 2010 at 7:14 am
Not A Native
Give the heart to the Tin Logger. As I was first reading your 1/2 share story I thought it would be about getting raw milk, a truly “progressive” thing. Otherwise I would expect the phrase “half side of beef”.
Do you know for certain whether it was a cow or a steer? Did you have your children see it alive and then later hanging on meat hooks? Did you and them share in the event of it being killed? Don’t know much about local cattle processing, is it being aged or do you just dig into the fresh carcass?
September 27, 2010 at 7:47 am
Dave Kirby
Jack London’s foe in the fight at the Oberon was Stanwood Murphy, a founder/owner of The Pacific Lumber Company.
September 27, 2010 at 8:02 am
Eric Kirk
What’s progressive about raw milk?
September 27, 2010 at 9:30 am
Anonymous
Hippies like raw milk. That makes it progressive.
September 27, 2010 at 10:13 am
Bolithio
An hour is a long time to fight!
The Oberon is open again if you didnt know. No pin-ups though =(
September 27, 2010 at 11:32 am
Not A Native
Sorry. guess my comment is missthreaded. Guess no one noticed.
Did Kirk’s kids participate in the process and learn exactly where their food comes from and what is done to get it to their plates? Isn’t that part of why bringing kids up in an agrarian environment is particularly beneficial to them as opposd to “city upbringing” that wrongly keeps them ignorant of processes that sustain their lives?
Anyway whats “progressive” about raw milk is its a way for people to shorten the chain of food production to consumption, eliminating middlemen who interfere with a direct relationship between producers and consumers. It also allows people to take more personal responsibility for whats in their food . It also takes control of food away from large scale enterprises that have unilateral power over an essential of life. That’s especially relevant in HumCo, one of the few counties in CA that maintains a prohibition on raw milk. And of course ending unjustified and outmoded prohibitions is a core “progressive” agenda. Finally it furthers the freedom of people choosing how to use and what to put into their own bodies.
September 27, 2010 at 11:43 am
Plain Jane
So you can’t be a progressive if you don’t want to drink unpasteurized milk? I grew up on unpasteurized / nonhomogenized milk and would drink raw cow or goat milk from my own animal but when I’m buying it from a stranger – I’ll take it without the risk of bacteria, thank you very much.
Nan’s tent for progressives just keeps getting smaller. I’m predicting it will soon be a pup tent.
September 27, 2010 at 11:48 am
Eric Kirk
It’s also more expensive than regular milk and while there might be good reasons to buy and consume it, it seems more like an issue for the elite who can afford it. There are plenty of wealthy progressives who are willing to go to Whole Foods and spend seven bucks on a small basket of organic strawberries, but as a “progressive” issue I think it’s kind of limited. I’m all for consumer choice, but then so are free market right wingers who operate by the principle of caveat emptor. I’m agnostic as to whether it’s a good idea to buy raw milk as I have not read or heard the arguments for either side of the issue other than what I’ve heard once or twice on Thank Jah.
My kids know exactly where their food comes from. They did not participate in the butchering of the cow, but my son has cleaned fish. Does that meet your approval?
September 27, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Not A Native
Gee Eric, organic veggies are more expensive than conventional. That guess you’d say organic veggies are for the elite. do you eat them? If so, you’re of the “elite”. And BTW what was the cost of that “half cow”? Was it more expensive, overall than Stop ‘n Shop. Bet it was! But being in the elite doesn’t make you an elitist, IMO, just privledged and able to indulge a rarified sensibility.
Anyway I didn’t write nor infer its necessary to buy raw milk to be consistent with progressive ideas, I wrote that making raw milk available is consistent with progressive ideas. Progressive people may be allergic to milk, have lactose intolerance, or not like the taste of milk and don’t drink it. Actually, not drinking any cow milk in respect of animals is also consistent with progressive ideas. And drinking pasturized milk, isn’t contrary to being progressive. A choice might be to buy raw milk and pasturize it at home or buying commerically pasturized milk.
And PJ purchasing from people you don’t trust isn’t a progressive attribute. A progressive attitude is to make efforts to know the people you trade with and also not to assume “strangers” and “outsiders” are a danger to you, simply for that fact alone. Being suspicious of “strangers” isnt a progressive worldview, its a conservative worldview.
September 27, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Plain Jane
I didn’t say I was suspicious of strangers, Nan. I said I didn’t want unpasteurized milk from strangers. Since I can’t know how clean anyone’s milking equipment is and due to the serious diseases associated with raw milk, I prefer it be pasteurized before I give it to my family. Now tell me how caring about your family is a conservative ideal as well.
September 27, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Jendocino
On the addendum about Jack London: This sounds like a good plan for governance. Lock the politicians in a bar for an hour to throw haymakers at each other until they get a plan worked out or kill each other trying. I can see many advantages this system has over our current one…
September 27, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Not A Native
PJ cloaking your personal fears and suspicions in the rubrick of caring for your family is the same rhetorical conservative appologism that Eric tried with his “its about the kids”. It was really about him and its really about you. Everyone cares for their families, including those “strangers” you find so ominous. A basic view that we’re all in this together and assumed to have good intent unless otherwise demonstrated is what essentially differentiates progressives from conservatives.
BTW, serious diseases are associated with all foods, don’t eat anywhere where “strangers” who you can’t know are clean have prepared or handled the food. Use bleach on all your purchased food, you can’t know how clean anyone’s hands were who touched it. And be concerned about who manufactured the bleach too. In fact, just don’t ever leave your house. There are strangers outside who you can’t know won’t do you grievous harm.
September 27, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Plain Jane
Taking all that care to wash you food is great. How do you wash your milk?
September 27, 2010 at 2:30 pm
Plain Jane
Seriously I think your game of out progressing everyone is getting to be a great big bore, Nan. You are so self-righteous about every little thing, quick to find fault with anything less than perfection. We all weigh the risk / benefit ratio of our actions, including you. Judging people for not giving the same weight to priorities or risks that you would isn’t very progressive of you, btw.
September 27, 2010 at 2:35 pm
Eric Kirk
Gee Eric, organic veggies are more expensive than conventional. That guess you’d say organic veggies are for the elite. do you eat them? If so, you’re of the “elite”. And BTW what was the cost of that “half cow”? Was it more expensive, overall than Stop ‘n Shop. Bet it was! But being in the elite doesn’t make you an elitist, IMO, just privledged and able to indulge a rarified sensibility.
Yes, the organics movement is rife with elitism, and I’ve said so on the very blog.
As for what I buy, that’s a mixed bag. If organic produce is within ten or twenty percent of the commercial brand, and I have the money to spare that month, I’ll buy the organic. But my point is that I don’t pretend that my consumption patterns represent progressive political acts. I’ll spend the extra quarter for the green brand toilet paper and I bring my own bags to the market. Whoopie.
But it was you who presented your preferred consumption choice as “progressive.” Hence my question.
I’m a Luddite of sorts, but after reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, my instincts lean towards pasteurization. But I will reserve judgment for now because unlike some self-proclaimed progressives I am not an expert on what I know nothing about. Maybe pasteurization is a corporate plot to steal money from the proletariat and make workers less healthy. I really don’t know.
September 27, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Eric Kirk
On the addendum about Jack London: This sounds like a good plan for governance. Lock the politicians in a bar for an hour to throw haymakers at each other until they get a plan worked out or kill each other trying. I can see many advantages this system has over our current one…
Might also increase CSPAN ratings.
September 27, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Eric Kirk
September 27, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Mr. Nice
Milk is calories. Milk is good for baby animals trying to gain double their body weight in a few weeks.
People drink milk because it tastes good. People drink raw milk because it tastes better than pasteurized milk. This whole health issue argument is dumb. Yes there is some slim chance that unpasteurized milk will cause death but there is an even higher chance that daily overdose on dairy products will produce a fat ass gut and all the health problems associated with that.
I’m allergic so I might be biased. But seriously, how great could the health benefits be of something that really only Punjabi and white people are not allergic to? I don’t think so.
Still, should be legal and regulated. Who cares about some random bacteria? Fuck em. If people are going to drink raw milk, it might as well be produced by a known process.
September 27, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Not A Native
Eric, don’t put words on my keyboard. I never suggested or implied that any personal consumption choice is “progressive” ipso facto. Your writing that I did is untrue and simply a projection of your fear of having your personal choices scrutinized and evaluated.
What I DID write is that being for legalizing the choice of raw milk is a progressive position. And I didn’t suggest pasteurization is a plot. But I wrote that government mandated middlemen, justified by semiscientific reasons, is contrary to progressive values of having liberty and being able to take personal responsibility for your body and the things you put into it. FWIW, if a regulation was proposed that only dairies could retail raw milk that would also be anti-progressive, although less so than the outright prohibition now in HumCo.
You know, The Jungle was published in 1906. I guess nostalgia and remembering a past you never lived is your bag Eric, given this thread’s subject too. Do you think there could just possibly have been new knowledge in technology and health science since 1906 that created new techniques to achieve food safety?
And think Eric, how do all those other parents/patriarchs in Ca. manage to survive while dangerous “raw milk” is being consumed by their kids and families? Do you think they’re simply decadent careless elitists, paying a premium for fashionable and risky products? Snobby people who avoid “sensible” behavior that “good”(cloth coat Republican) people observe.
September 27, 2010 at 8:28 pm
Mr. Nice
I agree everybody should have to right to buy whatever they want including raw milk. I could care a damn if people bought straight up E. coli smoothies fortified with listeria powder. But all this talk about raw milk being so safe and great and new cleaner cow milking methods is fantasy bullshit. Just look at the fat people saying this stuff is good for you. Serious. Like asking a crackhead for advice in the vitamin aisle.
September 28, 2010 at 11:47 pm
Anonymous
Have you ever noticed that vegetarians tend to be the ones with the most chronic health problems?
September 29, 2010 at 7:56 am
Healthy Vegan
Um. No.