us politics

I recently learned that an old friend passed away. Carol was an old school hard nosed reporter fiercely dedicated to the truth and local journalism. I was deeply touched to see that, in lieu of flowers, her estate was suggesting donations to an organization that I helped start. So that means it’s time to retell the story of the Lompoc Theatre Project, a curious and enduring legacy of Occupy Wall Street colliding with hyper local politics and corruption.

The year is 2011 and I’m living in Lompoc, California. A sleepy town that boasts a Home Depot, a Wallmart, a federal prison, and a nearby air force base. For most residents it’s a bedroom community, with an hour commute (driving, of course, because the train tracks are just for show) either north or south for work. I’m living there for the same reason as so many others: it’s cheaper than the alternatives and money is tight.

I know people think of California as some kind of leftist haven, but smallish semi-rural towns are definitely not like that. When Occupy Wall street started to make headlines it felt very far away. Somehow, through the grapevine, my housemate and I heard that some folks were calling a meeting at the gazebo (yes, this is the kind of place that has “the gazebo,” it’s right by “the coffee shop”) to maybe do some kind of local Occupy. The two of us were the only scraggly anarchist types usually associated with Occupy. The rest were middle aged and older working and middle class liberals, no more than 10 of us total. We chatted about what had brought us there and possible next steps as it began to drizzle. People were super energized, but for most of them this whole kind of scene was an absolutely new thing. My housemate and I were wary of potential tension between our more radical background and this more polite crowd. But it turned out that they were excited to learn from us about this “consensus” thing they had heard about on the news and what followed was some of the most productive coalition building and collaboration I have ever been part of.

We knew we didn’t have the numbers or commitment to do a full on permanent Occupy. So we opted instead for a weekly presence on Saturday mornings, along with an occasional General Assembly planning meeting generously hosted by a local church. There was a very obvious place for our Occupy. Right at the main crossroads in town (it’s kitty corner from the coffee shop, and where you turn right after you come from the Home Depot to head up to the Wallmart) was—and still is today—an empty lot. The fact that a corner in the middle of what should be the downtown is a huge empty weed filled lot tells you everything you need to know about Lompoc. So that’s where we stood every Saturday morning. We held up signs, hosted a Really Really Free Market one week, had a potluck another, and did our best to build community and show that even in Lompoc the ideals of Occupy had a home. Then something very strange happened…

On December 17th (2011) Some cops showed up and told us we had to leave because we were trespassing and the owner of the lot wanted us gone. Again, this was an empty lot without any fence around it or anything¹. But that wasn’t the strange part. We of course immediately started trying to figure out how to respond, including trying to figure out who this owner was that had decided, after two months(!) of us hanging out for a couple of hours every Saturday morning, that we were trespassing. The cops who evicted us were not forthcoming. But, after some sleuthing, cajoling, and polling of local contacts we learned that the empty lot used to be, back in the day, a gas station. And it was the former owner of that gas station who had called the cops on us. Except—and this is where this story takes a whole new turn—we also discovered that according to official records they weren’t the owner of the lot. The owner was actually the City of Lompoc … sort of.

I’m going to do my best to explain this next part succinctly, just keep in mind that IRL this took a lot of research, document requests, city council meetings, phone calls, and tedious work to piece together. This is also when I met Carol, the semi-retired journalist but still committed to old fashioned muckracking. While I worked at this from the activist angle, she doggedly worked at it from the journalistic angle. She was always careful to maintain her independence as a reporter but we would regularly share our discoveries and progress with each other and developed a deep respect and friendship for each other. Ok, so, what exactly did we uncover about our humble empty lot? (And what does that have to do with a theater?)

The story revolves around the scandal plagued, and at the time recently bankrupt, Lompoc Housing and Community Development Corporation (LHCDC). But to understand what the LHCDC was we have to understand two types of tax mechanism used in the U.S., one for low income housing and the other for redevelopment. Both are essentially ways for the government to privatize its responsibilities.

For low income housing, a non-profit partners with a for-profit developer. In exchange for building a low income project the for-profit developer gets tax credits, which they can either use themselves or resell on an exchange market. The non-profit then administers the project, acting essentially as the landlord. The non-profit will usually rely on grants from the city to subsidies their work. Many of those grants are actually state or federal money, and the city is only distributing them. Except, often the grants are actually loans. If everyone follows the rules and does what they say they will, they are automatically forgiven—i.e. converted from a loan to a grant—but otherwise they need to be repaid. So that means, if the non-profit fucks up the city can suddenly be liable to the state or federal government. And yes, all of this is needlessly complicated and indirect and bureaucratic. Welcome to U.S. politics where no one wants to actually do nice things for the public, and instead shifts and hides responsibility behind layers of privatization because the government actually doing stuff is Bad™.

That’s where the LHCDC came from. LHCDC started out as LHC, the Lompoc Housing Corporation, whose job it was to be the main non-profit in town administering low income housing projects and homeless shelters. So it’s essentially performing a government function—most of its money came via the city—, but as a semi-private non-profit…very useful for evading oversight. Maybe you see where this is going? But before we get there I have to explain what a redevelopment agency is.

Before 2012 California had something called Redevelopment Agencies. They were meant as a way for cities to invest in faltering neighborhoods and spruce them up. They relied on something called tax increment financing. Say you have a part of town that is run down. It’s not easy to attract new development or investment because financing is seen as too risky; property values are low, making them poor collateral, and the risk of the area not taking off is too high. But, if a project were to succeed, property values would go up and with them tax revenue for the city. The basic idea is to secure loans based on that expected future tax revenue. But, because this is the U.S., the city doesn’t do that directly. Instead, they partner with a private organization, the redevelopment agency. The city then promises that all future increases in tax revenue from a designated geographic area (the “blighted” neighborhood) will go not to the city like normal but to the (private) redevelopment agency. The redevelopment agency then uses that promise of future tax money to secure the loans it needs to carry out its building projects, while also gaining access to state and federal grants and to favorably financing terms.

At some point the LHC decided to add “Community Development” to its name, becoming the LHCDC and adding to its portfolio the role of Redevelopment Agency for the city of Lompoc. In retrospect, at this point behind the scenes things had probably already started to go horribly wrong. To this day we don’t know to what extent simple incompetence, disdain for the poor they were supposed to serve, or criminal embezzlement are to blame but the LHCDC was in deep financial trouble. The expansion into redevelopment was probably driven by a desperate attempt to find new revenue streams. Whether they actually thought they could pull it off and then back fill the hole in the housing side, or if it was a grift from day one I honestly don’t know. But either way the LHCDC started buying up property in Lompoc with the promise of shiny new projects. They even made architectural renderings for some of them. But none of them ever went anywhere. Instead the LHCDC went bankrupt.

I’ll get to the theater in a moment, I promise, but I want to make sure you understand what LHCDC going bankrupt meant for the community. They had already been dropping the ball for years before this (and the complete lack of oversight from the city and the county is another part of this story). Residents of the low income housing projects LHCDC was supposed to be administering had been complaining that needed repairs were slow, shoddy, or nonexistent. Rent was routinely overcharged. There was never anyone to talk to about the problems. And some even had no choice but to move out and find market rate homes they couldn’t really afford because the issues were so serious. When the LHCDC went bankrupt the residents who had remained were left completely in the lurch. The local homeless shelter also abruptly shut down and was saddled with massive debt. And remember those state and federal grants that were structured as loans? The city was now on the hook for millions of dollars.

You would think the city would be angry about that, and one of the city council members was. But, the reason we never learned the whole story of what happened, or where the money went, is that the Lompoc City Council deliberately dragged its feet when it came to demanding a forensic audit, collaborating with the grand jury, and generally demanding accountability. I can’t entirely tell you why, but the conspiracy cork board of head-shots and tangled yarn connecting all of the people involved, both within the LHCDC and multiple levels of local government, would be deemed implausible for even the cheapest Hollywood blockbuster. At this point the money is long gone and the damage done.

The worst damage of LHCDC’s not so innocent collapse definitely fell on those who had been relying on them for their housing. But, there were also all those properties it had bought up with shiny promises of redevelopment. One of those was a big, weed filled, empty lot right in the middle of town … right where Occupy Lompoc had been gathering every Saturday morning. They bought the lot from the gas station guy. He genuinely seemed to think that because the LHCDC had folded, and had never fully paid down the loan they took out for the lot, that it had reverted back to him. But that turned out to not be entirely correct. Because of the structure of redevelopment agencies and the nature of the loans and grants LHCDC had used the city of Lompoc actually held the controlling lien on the property. Except, the city didn’t know that until we, Occupy Lompoc backed by Carol’s investigative reporting, informed them; that’s how shoddy the oversight was and how actively uninterested they were in looking into anything related to LHCDC. We had started digging to understand who was kicking us off our Occupy spot and to whom we might able to appeal, and we ended up uncovering a much, much, bigger mess.

But there was one more surprise. The LHCDC hadn’t just bought the empty lot, they had also bought the derelict building right next to it: the former Lompoc Theatre! I’ll the let the Lompoc Theatre Project explain the history of the building, but basically it was a historic theater that closed down in 1975 and was just sitting there empty. It needed a lot of renovation work, and also had accumulated a hefty unpaid property tax bill, but for all that still had the potential to be a strong social and community anchor for revitalizing Lompoc’s downtown. The city, however, did not see it that way. To them it was all just a nuisance. We tried appealing to their better nature at city council meetings, but, well, you can imagine how that went.

At this point it was more than a year after that first drizzly meeting at the gazebo. Occupy Lompoc had run its course. But, the friendships, connections, trust, and skills developed during its run were still there. So we called another meeting, this time in someone’s living room, to discuss what could maybe done about the theater. That was the start of the Lompoc Theatre Project—a group of folks trying to get the old theater back up and running because we ought to have nice things damn it. I no longer live in Lompoc but the Theatre project endures. They eventually took control of the building, paid the back taxes, raised money, and have begun work on the long overdue renovations. Hopefully one day the theater will be the community hot spot Lompoc deserves.

And lastly, some of this history I am recalling from memory. But, a lot of it I had to double check and fill in missing pieces, which I was able to do thanks to Carol’s tireless work and the many invaluable articles in the local newspaper she has left behind. Thank you Carol.

P.S. You may been wondering why it’s the Lompoc Theatre Project and not the the Lompoc Theater Project. Well, that was the one condition the former owners, the Calverts, made for their support when Carol and I went to meet them. Needless to say the city hadn’t told them that any of this was going on. We chatted with them around their kitchen table and they told us stories about how popular the place was back in the day. His family had always written it theatre so it was important to him that it stay that way. That’s what organizing looks like sometimes, not big sexy protests but meeting with folks you wouldn’t normally talk to (I doubt our politics aligned on anything else) and seeing if you can put together a coalition to do some good.

In the violin world when people ask questions like “how do I maintain motivation to keep practicing?” the answer is: habits are better than motivation. Instead of relying on motivation or inspiration to hit, you should make a plan, have a routine, build the habit of practicing day in day out. Politics are the same. When folks ask "how do we get people to care?" the answer is: culture and ideology are better than individual feelings. Instead of hoping people feel moved to act on a specific topic we need to build norms, and yes, habits.

Part of the power of unions is inculcating that culture and identity of “we are union people, which means we show up in solidarity when shit goes down.” Part of the power of anarchism is that you have a ready ideological framework for understanding power and don't have to reanalyze every new situation from scratch. You know what side you're on. You know what to do. You’ve practiced this with your friends.

I know the pervasive Liberalism of our age makes many uncomfortable with this idea. A call for constructing “the human nature of the revolutionary,” or whatever, sound hopelessly outdated. People like to seem themselves as approaching everything with an open mind and thinking for themselves. But that’s a trap. Having the right “hot take” isn’t politics. That’s how you end up arguing about Musk’s Nazi salute is a true reflection of his interiority and whether to be kind to people who voted for Trump and generally feeling overwhelmed, paralyzed, and isolated.

When shit gets real you need to have community and habits to fall back on. You get there by building a shared culture of resistance where norms and practices have become not just second nature but, yes, the new human nature of the revolutionary.

I’m seeing a lot posts from folks in the US-sphere about how to “prepare” for the next four years. And they’re mostly good, (though, not entirely¹) and folks are right to fear what may come. For a lot of folks the coming years are going to be hell; let’s call that category 1. But, in a way, I’m more afraid that, for many nothing, will come at all, or at least only very little will change for them. I don’t mean the rich and racist who are salivating for future horrors; let’s call that category 3. I mean all the folks who with a small shrug and a bit of adaptation will blithely and happily continue along with their lives. This is category 2. The thing is, I strongly suspect that a lot of folks (not everyone; I’m not saying that at all) posting, reading, thinking about “preparing” actually fall into this second category, even though they might think they are in the first.

I think a lot of folks are going to be all geared and gussied up to fight fascism and then find that it has come in the night to beat up some folks in that other neighborhood (you know the one) and they at most heard some sirens in the night. I think folks are so focused on being prepared, on their own safety, on knowing how to react, on being the target that they’re going to miss the fact that fascism might not care about them all that much. A story my Grandmother used to tell was that after the war ended a neighbor a few doors down knocked on their door and said proudly (smugly?) “I knew what you were doing and I didn’t rat you out to the Germans.” and my Grandmother politely said “thank you” but in her mind was thinking “That’s the absolute bare minimum you asshole [I’m paraphrasing here]; that’s not being part of the resistance. That doesn’t make you one of the good ones.”

I’m not saying bad shit isn’t going to happen and lots of folks aren’t going to get hurt. That is definitely going to happen. But, well, for example. You’re book club isn’t going to pick Trump’s “Stories of True Patriots™”…but it only has 4 members. The local church, a nice normal church, might though because Lucy really wants to, and the President did ask everyone to read it, and what’s one book to stay friends with Lucy? You aren’t part of that church. What are you going to do about it?

I’m glad so many folks are interested and eager to think about the work ahead. I really am! And I’m not offering a full blown solutions here, which is a weak-sauce cop-out, I know. But I would like to offer one small correction and one small addition to the present discourse. First, yes be prepared but be realistic about what you—you specifically—are actually going to face. Second, to that end, look more closely at how historical and present day fascist and totalitarian states operate. Present day Hungary and India, recently Philippines and Poland, historically East Germany and Portugal are all good examples. Unfortunately there are many. The scenes that play in the popular imagination of jackbooted thugs smashing down your door and sending you to a camp to die the day after you dared say “the Leader is a poo-poo head” are … simplistic. Those regimes are/were scary and awful as fuck. But also more complex and janky than a Hollywood hero movie.

And now this post is starting to veer into what fascism actually is and isn't and how it's not just anything ultra conservative or any big shot who wants to be a dictator but a specific combination of the two that has love of Power (with a specific capital P) combined with a totalitarian outlook, and totalitarian not just in the political sphere but also the cultural, civic, and social sphere which I think we haven't seen play out in the U.S. to the same extent yet.

But that's not what I wanted to say today! I just wanted to say (tl;dr:) I’m glad y’all are thinking about how to prepare but just keep in mind they might not actually be coming for you, or even your next door neighbor, and certainly not necessarily in an overt show of force way and you should also be ready to handle a thousand soft choices while the black shirts are terrorizing that other neighborhood (you know the one) and do you actually know anyone over there? Because—and be honest with yourself about this—your neighborhood might actually continue unscathed for a good while yet. That’s one of the scariest things about fascism.

A common chant at U.S. demonstrations for a while now has been "this is what democracy looks like." I disagree. Marches are a patch for when democracy on its own doesn’t deliver the "will of the people". Ideally we wouldn’t be in the streets; we’d all have a our voices heard in the room. But we march anyway. We understand that sometimes you have to pull on the levers of power you can reach, even while you work to dismantle and rebuild the machine.

The U.S. is, if we are being wildly generous, a deeply flawed democracy. Power is concentrated and fortified by money and violence. Most folks are left out in the cold. We all know this. And yet elections happen. Maybe the outcome only matters a little and maybe the process is warped by the flows of power. But elections still happen. They are still a lever, however inconsequential, that can be pulled.

Some of you are thinking “If voting mattered it would be illegal” and that’s half right, but only half. Power isn’t monolithic. There is a tendency to build up the enemy as a pervasive suffocating power. But in the real world everything is a bit more squishy and porous and human than that. That’s why organizing and demonstrations and all that good stuff sometimes work. Why oppressive power still sometimes inexplicably leaves itself open would require a whole line of analysis that is way beyond the scope of my rant here. The point is that, for now at least, elections are still a thing in the U.S. and, while the process is shit, they’re not yet 100% a puppet show. We have to hit them any way we can, however small.

And some of you are going to start talking about not wanting to consent or be complicit in the horrors of the next administration. There will be horrors. I agree. But voting isn’t a pledge of loyalty. You already don’t believe that the U.S. is a democracy, you already don’t believe that they particularly care about your consent or are in need of your complicity. I know the Liberals like to attach moral baggage to voting. But why would we, as anarchists, accept that? All that talk about “earning” and “deserving” your vote, about the patriotism of participating in the process, about democracy … fuck it. Your vote isn’t any of that. It’s just a thing you can do to maybe make the world slightly better. It costs you practically nothing. At the end of the day those in power are more than happy to take abstention at the polls to mean that you’re basically fine with whatever. Voting is only being complicit if it’s the only thing you do; what matters are the other 364 days.

And I more than admit that the U.S. is system is beyond dumb. If you live in Wyoming or Washington D.C. I don’t care if you vote for the presidency or not. You’re right. You’re vote in that race mostly doesn’t matter. But, and I know this isn't a novel insight, there’s a lot more on the ballot than the presidency. Local races at the city, county, school board, sheriff, judge (can you fucking believe judges are an elected position??) make a massive difference in people’s daily lives. I promise that if you don’t think so you aren’t paying enough attention. Will electing the right people usher in the revolution? Of course not. Neither will not buying stuff from Amazon, using Signal, or running the local Food Not Bombs. But all of those can make the world a little bit better so we do them anyway.

bonus tangent: There is a tension in anarchism between wanting to build alternative institutions and community in parallel to the current world and wanting to challenge the current world. Both streams are living and valid parts of contemporary anarchism. We often try to paper over that difference with talk of “direct action” but I am not convinced that that’s as theoretically robust as we would always like it to be. And my tangent to this tangent is that historically anarchism was all about “propaganda by the deed” and somewhere (if some historian of anarchism could help me pinpoint when I would be deeply grateful!) that fell away. At the very least the idea that anarchists have never wanted to engage with the current system is ahistorical.