The Right Wing of the Surfboard: Santa Cruz's Military-Industrial Presence

In the Infinite City map "The Right Wing of the Dove" Rebecca Solnit discusses how San Francisco has cultivated a strong liberal, eccentric, artistic and peaceful image that it has become widely associated with, and how this leads people to overlook its powerful and immoral military-industrial presence. As part of the San Francisco contado, Santa Cruz has fallen into a similar pattern, largely romanticized as the "hippy surf town, full of college kids and stoners." As with San Francisco however, Santa Cruz has a strong and mostly overlooked right side, which I see exemplified in two current issues facing the community. The Santa Cruz community was recently polarized by the police departments spending $250,000 of funding to acquire a Bearcat--an armored assault vehicle that is essentially a small tank. The public was not made aware or given a chance to offer input on the process until after citizens discovered that it was underway and began to protest. While the police department claims that it will be used only for rescue and other sensitive operations (of which they struggled to find any relevant examples in the past 15 years), the vehicle's name itself: Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter-Attack Truck--lends credence to the public outcry that heralds it as the militarization of the police force. The presence of the vehicle creates a militarized atmosphere in which the community, rather than being held as the subjects of protection and service, are viewed as potential combatants. Protestors fear that the bearcat will be used against rallies, protests, and other public demonstrations, and while the police chief has stated that the bearcat won't be used against "peaceful demonstrations" the police's definition of what constitutes a peaceful demonstration is often different from the public's. santa cruz hopes to calm tension over bearcat. The second example is not so much an issue as a presence that the vast majority of the community is unaware of. Empire Grade winds up past the west entrance of campus and nearly an hour into the mountains before it ends, and while exploring it I recently discovered that at the end of this beautiful redwood road is none other than a Lockheed Martin system design, manufacture, and test facility. For those unfamiliar with Lockheed Martin, they are the largest defense contractor and weapons producer in the world. It has been described as the world's most powerful corporation, and is undoubtedly the largest war profiteer on the face of the planet. Lockheed Martin is responsible for donating millions to groups supporting various wars and US military engagements, including their former vice-president holding the position as chair of the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq. They have been convicted of multiple violations of US criminal law. They're pretty much awful, which should go without saying about a company whose entire existence is predicated on the continuation and development of war. The Santa Cruz facility has refused to allow even limited public tours or groundwater and soil toxicity tests of the facility or its surroundings. There is very little information available about the facility or its director, the interestingly named Byron Ravenscraft, but it has been revealed that the facility is involved in producing Trident II missiles, a thermonuclear warhead with a range of 4000 miles. Unsettling, to say the least.