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¶ … Monkey Wrench Gang," by Edward Abbey [...] issue, where does Monkey Wrenching (the type of political activity in the Monkey Wrench Gang) fit into protest politics as a bridge to mass movement politics? Is Monkey Wrenching a part of the fabric of participatory democracy? Monkey Wrenching is clearly extraordinary politics, but does it have a place in our participatory representative democracy?
THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG
Participation in America may seem like a dying art, but every day, thousands of Americans participate in their communities, take care of others, and spout their political beliefs for the betterment of all. From grandmothers who read to children in their local library, to college student protesting the war in Iraq, citizens in America have the right to change the world, one person at a time. Edward Abbey's "The Monkey Wrench Gang" is a novel of participation at its best. The motley gang of four who travel the western U.S. Monkey Wrenching construction sites and sites of man's "progress" are true participants in life, hoping to make a difference in their beloved buttes and mesas of the desert Southwest. "Keep it like it was" is their motto, and non-violent violence is their core. They hope to influence other lovers of nature, the desert, and natural beauty to rise up and burn a billboard or two, sabotage a bulldozer, or protest development in the name of Monkey Wrenching the political system, and changing the course of desert history. Did they succeed? No. The abominable Glen Canyon Dam still stands as a monument...
Yet ultimately, Abbey's gang did indeed influence political thought processes, for even ultra conservative Barry Goldwater, an early proponent of the dam, came to admit, "that its construction had been a terrible mistake" (Brinkley, Introduction xx).
The four members of the Monkey Wrench Gang are at once dysfunctional and disarming. George Washington Hayduke hates developers, and believes in pulling up any survey stake he can find, just to throw the developers off course. Doc Sarvis is a well-educated heart specialist with a penchant for burning down billboards. Bonnie Abbzug is the New York Jew transplant in love with the west - and Doc, and Seldom Seen Smith is a jack Mormon boatman who hates the dam with everything he's got - even his three wives. Together they form a union of four who love the west, and hate its "Californication" by developers, greedy miners, and clueless tourists. They want to change the way people look at the open spaces left in the west, and they do it by quietly subverting developers' machinery, pulling up survey stakes, and generally wreaking havoc with anyone who wants to change their land. "Keep it like it was." The establishment sees them as dangerous radicals who want to destroy progress, but environmentalists came to call them champions, showing what the work of a few can mean to many when it comes to a struggle for what is right and wrong. They represent anyone who has stood up to fight against something they strongly believed in - from the American Revolution to…
Protest and Fences Racism and racial prejudices have many forms, some more obvious than others. For people who are part of the minority population, there will be some level of bias when it comes to hiring practices or other benefits. African-Americans for example had to deal with racism, even if it was not understood by the perpetrators to be racism, in nearly every aspect of their daily lives. Some prejudicial beliefs
Besides the death of 100,000 Iraqi civilians, the number of severely wounded people and the remaining families, relatives, and friends of the dead and wounded is well over a million. (Hil 63). And, nearly 3,000 U.S., troops have lost their lives in combat in Iraq. The number of lost lives continues to grow every single day because the U.S. isn't doing the right thing. If we don't do something,
Other protests presented by CIS included unfair evaluation of OTG - another presenting company. Complaints here included vague requirements; insufficient detail as to why they rejected proposal; apparent duplicity (as in the case of implying that three of its present employees were available for position); and ambiguous and vague language in its blanket statements. The decision was that the agency misevaluated the proposal of CIS as well as that of OTG,
Protest Song One protest song from the 1960s that stands out is Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddman.” It is a song about the racism in the South that was tearing the country apart in the 1960s. As an African American and friend of Malcolm X, Nina Simone was angry about what she saw and this song’s lyrics express that anger: “I can’t stand the pressure much longer,” she sings early in the
Ferguson and FaithThe primary purpose of this book Ferguson and Faith, by Leah Gunning Francis, is stated explicitly in the Introduction: \\\"This book shines a spotlight on some of their sacred stories of courage and hope that might awaken in us seeds of possibilities that, if nurtured, could bend our imagination and actions toward a future filled with hope\\\" (4). In other words, the book aims to highlight the stories
The Sixties and the Seventies were a complicated era. On the one hand it was the height of the Cold War. On the other hand, it was the height of the peace and love movement. It was an era in which the culture of America was being shaped from that point on. Feminism sparked in the 1970s, but so too did the punk movement. Before that rock ‘n’ roll had