Annie Robbins is the reader who tipped me off to the attempted boycott of the Coastal Post in Marin County because of its Israel commentary, years before the lobby started targeting the Berkeley Daily Planet. She lives out that way and offered this background to the story.
These little papers are not for the most part funded by donations from Jewish patrons (as someone is arguing in your comment section), they are supported by advertisers. The people opposing them have threatened their advertisers, other small local businesses.
This story is well known all around Western Marin because it is a closeknit beach community compromising Muir Beach, Bolinas, Olema, Tamales Bay, Stinson Beach, Pt. Reyes, Pt Reyes Station, Bear Valley, Inverness, Dog Town, Mt Tamalpais, Two Rock, a region largely unchanged in many respects due to the national park restrictions on growth and a polically and environmentally aware left-leaning community in general.
The paper had been around for years and was popular, and free. Over the mountain (Mt Tamalpais, the stunning mt you see when you cross over the Golden Gate Bridge, the heart of Marin County) where I live the paper was also popular in Fairfax and Mill Valley, the two towns that offer accessibility to Western Marin via Hwy 1 and Sir Francis Drake [and San Anselmo, inspiration to Van Morrison on Hard Nose the Highway album-- editor].
Berkeley is an urban area w/a reputation for being revolutionary in the comparatively (w/respect to the US) revolutionary spirit of the SF bay area. But I grew up here and I know well that the boondocks of rural Western Marin was really the heart of the entire hippie movement that fueled SF. This is Grateful Dead/Starship/Janis country. And these old 60′s types rule this area in the hills of Western Marin. It is the gateway to the mountainous counter culture region of northern california, by far the most counter culture area of the country i have ever been to, and i’ve seen a lot.
The idea the Coastal Post could be attacked like this here, in a region that really is isolated (very private) and largely ignored, unlike Berkeley. It boggles my mind. If this can happen here it can happen anywhere. Bolinas is famous for residents refusing to allow a road sign to its entrance, easily missed if you don’t know where it is. This is where Richard Brautigan wrote Watermelon Sugar for god’s sakes. why can’t we even have a pocket of freedom of the press anywhere?? People here don’t read the friggin Chronicle! For many of the surfers here the Coastal Post is all they know of the outside world. Many people here still use outhouses for christs sakes, i.e., they use the Post for everything, and to start their fires too. It is a vital resource!
[Editor: I introduced factual error here earlier, making it Watermelon Pickle. Brautigan's first novel was Watermelon Sugar, Robbins says.]
thanks for the viewpoint annie!
I lived in Berkeley for many years beginning in the mid sixties. I recall many hippies escaping to the north coast (even then Marin county and the Bolinas area was much too expensive to escape to) but Mendocina and Humbolt Counties were cool places to go. They had an utopian notion that they could escape from political reality. Somehow build alternative communities independent of rest of the capitalist world. We thought it was nuts. Only now are you realizing that your world is controlled by financial forces bigger than yourselves? Guess what, you were wrong. Of course, if you behave and leave Israel alone, the zionists that influence much of our business world will leave you alone. But puleeze, do not think you are free from the rest of the world.
Annie – it was I who made the argument about the outsize share of philantropic donations on the part of jewish “patrons” to various causes that depend on charitable gifting. Naturally, this was not a blanket statement about the way in which all publicly oriented ventures are supported – as that would be reaching. I had in mind the universities, research institutes, think tanks, NPR/PBS, film festivals (like SFJFF), group outlets like HuffPo etc. Small papers like the one you describe – along with many other regional/local papers are indeed dependent on advertising revenue. However, that’s just another way through which papers – and radio stations – can be threatened, often successfully (I know that another local paper, Palo Alto’s weekly has become quite shy about broaching the I/P issue, always careful to post letters on either side for “balance”).
The commonality between willingness to threaten donors, withdraw donations/subscriptions and put pressure on advertizers is in the overlap between wealth (to give substance to the threat), ruthlessness (willingness to exploit business and/or charitable relationship for a very narrow agenda + send in the henchmen to smear reputations) and ubiquity (to give it all a critical mass).
You may be underestimating the number of jewish and affiliated businesses and individuals in your – admittedly out-of the-beaten-track – community. To get a 60% rate of ad withdrawal, there had to be a concerted campaign, in a word-of-mouth kind of way. The threats did not all have to be local either, as many businesses have outlets everywhere. Either way, enough people, somewhere in the community had to be alerted for such a result.
I do, of course, agree wholeheartedly with your verdict – it is extremely disconcerting that such a small time publication would merit this much attention. The ruthlessness of it all is truly breathtaking.
Though to me, that also points the way for the kind of counter-action that can be effective. in the end, money is best fought with money, all the more so if one does not wish to match the ruthlessness.
Non-Jews have been taught to walk on tiptoes around Jews; Karin Friedemann explains: link to karinfriedemann.blogspot.com
Thus, a plurality of Jews to protest/withdraw advertising, etc., is not required. All that is required for an effective boycott is a bit of Jewish leavening, enough yeasty guilt to incent non-Jews to participate.
Gee, did you just give a profile of Phil’s wife? Judging by what little Phil says about her, I would say yes.
And, it is what BDS proposes to do.
During the anti-Vietnam War movement times there were those that were anti-war because they didn’t want to be killed (a rational sentiment), and there were poeple that were anti-war because they didn’t want to kill (a moral sentiment), and there were people that regarded the war as a descriptive symptom indicating that different institutions should be killed (a radical political sentiment, though rarely stated as “I want to kill”).
The moral approach was the most important.
Israel deserves worse than BDS, but we will settle for that.
Of course the moral sentiment was always trotted out; can’t very well trot out the rational sentiment and still agree someone has to be the boots on the ground for real national defense (as distinguished from imperialism).
So at worst, we’re fighting fire with fire.
Speaking of “ruthlessness”:
The Virtue of Hate
Meir Y. Soloveichik
link to firstthings.com
Where have you been America First? in your absence Mooser has become calm sweetness personified, Witty a purveyor of ethics in BDS, Chaos is off looking for order and I found momentary bliss in brevity. Alas, all things are temporary, but we sure get used to the good stuff in a hurry.