Lithium Jesus by Charles Monroe-Kane

Author:Charles Monroe-Kane
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-299-31000-4
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 2016-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

Ecotopia wasn’t perfect, but we tried. Many among this huge group of wide-eyed hippies had their copies of Callenbach’s Ecotopia out, believing that its central tenets were a recipe for a better future. The first order of business was to talk about our current world and how to solve its problems. Every morning while we ate our vegan breakfasts, we had a consensus-decision-making meeting. This was our template, our boots-on-the-ground action guided by the belief that dialogue could cure what ailed us. Should the camp be clothing-optional? Big discussion. What should we do about theft or illegal drugs? What about the economic inequalities between Western and Eastern participants who wanted to buy stuff at our meager eco store? Should we adhere to a common language? If so, should it be English or German? Or should we muddle through with multiple translations? These discussions, naturally, took forever and, frankly, drove me nuts. But the theory was powerful, and when it worked, it gave me a glimpse of what a utopian collective could really look like. As the days wore on, I grew more impressed with the power of such a model.

Another thing we had planned in advance for Ecotopia was a large-scale political action. This year, we were working with a local Bulgarian EYFA branch to help them raise awareness about efforts to shut down a nuclear power plant in the area. Now that the Soviet Union was kaput, many local groups were fighting for the permanent closure of the old and worn-out Soviet nuke plants. And, of course, Western companies were fighting to get the massive contracts to update them. After days of nonviolent training workshops (some of which I taught, using my Mennonite education), the camp was ready. The group was divided into four major categories: arrestables, nonarrestables, support, and logistics. Paxus, whose life’s passion to this day revolves around stopping nuclear power, had me so fired up that I opted to join him in the arrestables group.

I was very nervous as I handcuffed my wrists to my neighbor activists and became part of the long human chain blocking the entrance of the nuclear power plant. To make it harder for the local police to break us apart, we had slipped our arms into long PVC pipes before locking the cuffs. So unless the cops wanted to risk cutting our hands off in front of the national Bulgarian press, we were pretty secure, or so we thought.

We chanted and sang and were feeling pretty damn proud of ourselves by the time the police came. I wondered what they could do. Cutting the pipe would be too dangerous. Beatings caught on camera would only bring us sympathy. If they tried to wait us out and let us bake in the sun for days, we had a support group ready to care for our basic needs.

Instead, the police chose a method that I had never seen before but that I have since seen and experienced many times. They pepper sprayed our eyes.

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