February/March 1982 RAIN Page 9 Meanwhile, in the small California town of Bolinas our heroine, high school science whiz kid and terrific teenager Lou Swift, has developed a simple, inexpensive, do-it-yourself solar-electric photovoltaic cell. Many of her neighbors are experimenting with it with considerable success, disconnecting their houses from the power company wires. As Lou's father Roger had expected, the utilities, backed by the county, are not pleased. Negotiations between the Bolinas town council and the county had dragged on for weeks. As often happens in times of crisis, procedural issues soon eclipsed the original dispute over electrical disconnections. The county found ways to put pressure on the town, the town found ways to evade or neutralize county power. After protracted talks, however, the situation finally stabilized beyond further discussion. The county was going to come in and bulldoze any houses that remained nonconforming after ten days. The dispute had welded the Bolinesians together into a solid community in which personal feuds and disagreements were forgotten. With a sense of unanimous fury, the town council appointed a drafting committee which would prepare a declaration of secession from the county. As somebody said, “By God, we'll give 'em real disconnection!" If San Francisco could be both a city and a county, why couldn't Bolinas? Roger was made a member of the drafting committee, whose members secluded themselves in a backyard cottage for ten hours nonstop. That evening they took to the council meeting a document they titled, without mincing words, THE BOLINAS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE “We are American people. But we are human beings before we are Americans, and we would still be human beings if we ceased being American citizens. Governments are created to serve people, not the other way around. And so, when institutions have become bureaucratized and rigid, when the laws and applications of the laws no longer protect the people but have instead become a burden and a danger to them, then the people have the right, and indeed the duty, to take the management of their health, their welfare, and their happiness back into their own hands. “At such times old institutions become null and void. The people no longer pay attention to them. They do not pay taxes; they do not obey officials and the regulations they issue; they deny the power of the police, which must come from the consent of the people or it is mere armed tyranny. "In recent months we have seen the development of an intolerable situation in many parts of the territories which have become known as Ecotopia. Citizens despairing at the ineffectuality of government measures to protect them against the abuses and dangers of the chemical and nuclear industries have been forced to take direct action in self-defense. The citizens' just demands for healthy conditions of life, such as contaminant-free food and water supplies, air to breathe which does not contain dangerous levels of pollutants, freedom from the threat of nuclear plant accidents, and a reduction of the influx of carcinogenic substances into the biosphere, have been ignored or even derided—in government documents which call upon us to sacrifice human life upon the altar of profit. The attempts of our state governments to protect their citizens against the economic and health dangers of the automobile have been overturned by federal court order. Arrogant county bureaucracies and criminals employed by corporations have obstructed citizen attempts to achieve independent, renewable-source energy systems. In a time when experimentation and novelty are essential to our very survival, citizens have been forced into lock-step with outmoded standards. "Our petitions for redress of these grievances have been met with silence or outright refusal. Now, therefore, we the elected offcials of the Town of Bolinas proclaim that a state of civil emergency exists. The people must take the power over their destiny back into their own hands and form new institutions to defend their welfare. "From this date forward the Town of Bolinas is hereby declared an independent territory in which the laws of the county of Marin, the state of California, and the United States of America no longer have legal force whenever they run counter to duly instituted ordinances of the Bolinas Town Council. A Bolinas Militia responsible only to the Town Council will be constituted immediately to provide for the maintenance of order and for the defense of the Town if need should arise. A Bolinas Court will be established, with a judge to be elected immediately from the citizenry. A new tax structure, controlled by the town, will be implemented, and citizens should immediately, wherever possible, cease paying sales taxes to the state, real estate taxes to the county, and income taxes to the state or federal governments. “We take these steps with heavy hearts, for all citizens have a stake in the continuity of institutions, to which we develop a natural and healthy attachment. But our highest loyalty must be to ourselves and to our survival, and to the survival of our children and our childrens's children. At some point we must say to the state: This far and no farther! We draw that line today at the boundaries of our town. And we say to the world that we will defend ourselves and our future with our strength, our determination, and our honor." Proud words, indeed. Sure enough, Bolinas is soon given an opportunity to stand behind them. The crisis came at Bolinas because the citizens had decided their Festival of Indepence should include the traditional fireworks. They had experimented with Dimmy's holiday ideas from Friday night onward, and there had been a great round of partying. Lou's brother Mike and a couple of other people had made an expedition to San Francisco's Chinatown where they tracked down a supply of out-ofseason skyrockets and roman candles to be set off Sunday evening. The afternoon turned out to be unseasonably warm and almost windless. Virtually the whole population of the town, many of them rather hung over, gathered on the beach downtown. Lou wandered about happily, talking to people she hadn't seen for months because of her cell work; she took off her shoes and ran around barefoot on the sand. From about five o'clock on, the small children began asking when the fireworks would start. But people had brought food along, and wine and beer, and they were having fun talking over the growing regional crisis as well as their own exasperating negotiation with the county. They speculated about whether the little guard post they had established on the approach road would deter the bulldozers when they came. Moods ranged wildly from the fatalistic to the defiant. There was talk of lying down in front of the machines, and other talk of shooting at the operators. When it came right down to it, nobody knew what was going to happen. Finally it was dark enough for the fireworks. The roman candles spewed their colored fire. Rockets zoomed unpre- dictably upward, some fizzling into a mass of gunpowder smoke, others spraying into the night sky a vast globe of glowing rays of light. Whether it was because some of the rockets exploded over homes on the Stinson Beach spit across the inlet and alarmed the owners, or simply because the celebration had attracted police attention, shortly after the fireworks began a county sheriff's car approached the checkpoint on the Bolinas road. A little uncertainly, Dimmy (who was taking a turn at guard duty at the time) held up his hand to the approaching car. "Entry permit?" he asked. The sheriff's deputy got out of his car. "What's your name?" he asked.
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