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/* Written 11:44 AM Mar 14, 1997 by kopp@cpcug.org in igc:grns.usa.forum
By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 14 1997; Page A01
The Washington Post
ARCATA, Calif. -- The citizens here walk around with their own reusable cups. Nobody seems to throw anything away. Bicycles everywhere. Petitions for a moratorium on asphalt. Young people in dreadlocks tending their compost piles. Students majoring in ecology dressed like hobbits in hemp clothing. Graybeards driving pickup trucks with Earth First! bumper stickers.
There is something different about this fog-swept old mill town, wet and woolen and surrounded by coastal forests and farmland: Arcata is the first city in the nation to be run by members of the Green Party.
In the November elections, voters here created a Green majority of three on the five-member city council; the two others are liberal Democrats.
While consumer advocate Ralph Nader ran for president on the Green ticket, his campaign was quixotic, symbolic, a blip on the national political screen. But here, at least, the Green effort has moved from the fringes of agitation and advocacy onto the dais at city hall. Party members think that if they can make their ideas work in a town like Arcata, the movement could spread.
"It is put-up-or-shut-up time," said council member Bob Ornelas, 43, part-owner of the Mad River microbrewery and one of the first Green Party candidates elected to public office in the state.
When it dawned on Ornelas and his two Green comrades that they could actually be the majority, Ornelas first thought: "Wow." Then: "Do we really want to do that?"
There are currently 38 Greens holding elective office in 10 states; 20 of them are in California. But only in Arcata are they running the show.
"There are tremendous expectations," said Melanie Williams, a political science professor at Humboldt State University here and founding member of Arcata's Green Party. "All eyes are on us and we better get it right."
Already, Ornelas and his colleagues are learning that their transmutation into power brokers is going to test their idealism and their commitment to creating a sustainable community dedicated to environmental and social justice -- at the same time they make sure the potholes are patched. (This in a town where many of their supporters think there shouldn't even be roads.)
"I think there need to be communities that set examples," said Green council member Jason Kirkpatrick, 29, who works part time as a cashier at a food cooperative, but full time as an activist-politician.
Arcata, population 15,378 and about 300 miles north of San Francisco, makes Berkeley look middle of the road.
"The conservatives in this town are an endangered species. No, make that extinct, like the dodos," said Robin Arkley, a retired sawmill owner, a Republican and occasional radio commentator. Arkley points out that Nader beat Robert J. Dole in Arcata: "That's the kind of place this is."
It's also the site of the nation's first rural recycling center, built almost 25 years ago but now faltering, its managers say, because there is a glut of recyclables, which has depressed the market. The Greens have vowed to subsidize the facility. Ten years ago, the city converted its sewage treatment center into a series of filtering marshes that now attract birders from around the country. The city has the only "non-toxic semi-pro ball field" in the country and banned the use of herbicides along its roads a decade ago.
Arcata also declared itself a "nuclear-free zone." During the Persian Gulf War, peaceniks on the previous council turned the city into a "sanctuary" for soldiers who did not want to fight -- a move that outraged some locals and led to rallies supporting the troops, while it also ushered in Arcata's brief flirtation with Republicans. Citizens elected two for one term. Then they got rid of them.
Still, not everyone here has signed on to the Green revolution. "A lot of people are upset that it didn't come out they were all Greens until after the election," said former mayor Carl Pellatz, a Republican insurance salesman who is the most outspoken, and bitter, critic of the Greens.
Ornelas says bunk. Though party affiliation was not mentioned on the nonpartisan ballots, "everybody knew we were Greens," Ornelas said.
"Some people think we're watermelons," Kirkpatrick said. "Green on the outside. Red on the inside. . . . But we're taking two steps back from any controversial issue and listening to the community. . . . We're growing on people."
Said Ornelas: "Some people probably thought, 'Oh, boy, these people are going to go on some wild socialist spending spree.' But that's not how we think. We're actually fiscally pretty conservative. We want to grow jobs. We want to listen. But we look at things differently. What are the long-term effects of our decisions? How can we do things better? What are the benefits? And is it socially and environmentally just?"
Pellatz is not buying it. "They're talking about city employees having to ride bicycles," he complained. "Think about it!"
The Greens are indeed thinking about it. Some police and meter readers already ride bikes during their workday, and the Greens would like to see most city employees hop on bicycles when they are traveling around the downtown core.
Kirkpatrick does not own a car; he bicycles to council meetings. His roommate is a founder of the Alliance for a Paving Moratorium and editor of Auto-Free Times. Green council member Jennifer Hanan, 28, who manages a store that sells environmentally benign paper products and clothes -- including hemp clothes -- also has eschewed the combustion engine. So has Connie Stewart, a far-left Democrat on the council and the first African American elected in Humboldt County.
For dinner at a local microbrewery, Kirkpatrick eats tofu. He and Hanan are vegetarians. But Ornelas drinks a creamy stout and inhales a burger. ("What can I say?" Ornelas said with a shrug. "I'm not into tofu.")
The Greens are exploring a plan to provide free bikes for use in the town, following the lead of cities such as Boulder, Colo., Olympia, Wash., and Portland, Ore. They also are proposing to close some streets to cars. They would like to build a homeless shelter. They are pushing for the creation of a lodge to serve ecologically minded tourists at the city sewage marshes and the completion of a skateboard park. They've passed resolutions against PepsiCo Inc. for its activities in Burma, which is frequently cited for human rights violations.
But that was the easy part. Now the Greens of Arcata are exploring passage of one of the most extreme anti-smoking ordinances in the nation -- one that would not only outlaw cigarettes in Arcata's seven bars, but prohibit smokers from lighting up in public parks. Some supporters are balking -- worried that the Greens seem too willing to cross a line, legislating personal choice.
The Green council is torn, too, over a proposal to allow a local Indian tribe to build a health care center, which would offer both modern medicine and traditional healing. "The problem is they want to build the center on green space," Ornelas said. "So what is the Green position on something like that, when you're forced to decide between Indians and open land?"
The previous, more conservative city council filed suit against the group Food Not Bombs for feeding the homeless on the town plaza without obtaining permits. It was a controversial move, and the Greens are working to settle the resulting lawsuits.
Said Williams, the Humboldt professor: "You ask people, 'Do you want to support expensive, mindless litigation?' And everybody says no. Then you ask, 'Well, do you want to find the homeless on our beloved plaza?' And people go: Hmmmm. . . . It's the move from the symbolic to the real."
One of the Greens' first acts was to do away with a three-minute rule for public comment, so council meetings now go into the wee hours. On a recent evening, citizens were outraged that the California highway administration keeps spraying herbicides on state roads within the city limits. A "chemically sensitive bicycle rider" begged them to stop the spraying. A representative of Californians Against Toxics spoke of "some very gnarly chemicals." The council said it would investigate.
Other citizens urged the council to ban those annoying beepers that announce a truck is backing up. The council agreed to review the city's noise pollution ordinances. But the Greens worried about sending a message to businesses that they are not welcome in the town, which is suffering from low wages and high unemployment.
After the meeting, Green council member Hanan confessed that she sometimes misses her activist role now that she represents all the citizens of Arcata. "I don't like making these decisions," she said.
Ornelas laughed. "That's why people like us don't run the world."
CAPTION: Amid redwoods are Arcata, Calif., Green Party council members Jason Kirkpatrick, left, Jennifer Hanan and Bob Ornelas.
Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
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