If not for John... - Arnold Springer


For anyone planning to write a community history of contemporary Venice (1945-2005), a political overview would need to be prepared. Any political sketch of this period could not be written with addressing the role of John Haag. If not for John, elements of Prairie Fire, several corp of resident property owners in North Venice (both 'right' and 'left'), and Werner Shaarf and Associates, the political history of Venice would not have developed the way that it did.


It is not my intention to elaborate on the above history in this letter, but simply to acknowledge the debt of gratitude that all politically conscious people in today's Venice community owe to John. John helped change the course of contemporary Venice history and helped make Venice what it is today.

I arrived in Venice politically in 1968, just after taking a teaching position at CSULB. I had lived in North Beach since 1964, but graduate school at UCLA, dissertation, marriage and settling down occupied my time. The Santa Monica Evening Outlook newspaper, and then The Beachhead, kept me as up to date as I cared to be about Venice politics. At that time it seemed everything was about - North Venice re-development, nude beach, beats and poseurs, rock and roll, and street people. Prior to 1972 that's about what I knew of Venice politics.

I first encountered John Haag in the pages of both the Venice Beachhead and in the Outlook, not at the Venice West. Then, after 1972, I heard him speak at meetings, heard him present at the Beachhead collective, and witnessed his inspired and tireless work in the formation of the Peace and Freedom party.

John actually was one of the lead activists who helped build the national party from a very energetic base in Venice. In fact the Venice Organizing Committee, led by John, coordinated the founding of P & F chapters all over the country. John lit the spark and 'carried a load' in this campaign.

Over the course of several decades I watched John do political work in Venice. He was an inspiration and I, along with many others understood that and were drawn into political life here as a result of John's work. He worked closely then with Benjamin Spock.

In the long run, I suppose what captured me for John was his politics. He was an anarchist...., sometimes he could be libertarian, and often a liberal. He was never C.P., never Progressive Labor, never Revolutionary Communist Party. John was not a stereotypical Anarchist, not cut from the caricatures painted by some academics or by op ed writers, or for that matter by the popular culture. John believed in order, in discipline, and in intense collective work. He didn't believe that there was a real contradiction between the 'ideas' of self defining and determining community and the strategy to realize the same. He was very practical in that sense at least. Very practical for a poet, for an anarchist.

He was that kind of anarchist. Perhaps it's best to call him an anarcho-syndicalist, or a communitarian. He didn't ever grow misty eyed over 'class struggle' or 'workers of the world unite'. He was very much taken with acting and organizing locally. John was an organizer first and foremost, a principled organizer, a communitarian, and an anarchist.

This type of politics led him into conflict with other local Venice political activists, not just from the 'chamber of commerce and petty bourgeois right', but from the hard liners and doctrinaires on the left. I distinctly recall that John stood up to them - at The Beachhead; at the Town Council; in meetings of community activists in Venice; he stood up to their rhetoric and ideological blandishments. Much of the disagreement was aired at meetings in the Venice canals, and in confrontations at meetings of the Free Venice organization and at the Beachhead. These became legend among the Venice activists and I'm certain that many can still recount those' delicious' tales to this day.

I admired John for his courage and for his independence. Without John and his political posture and prominence, I probably never would have become as deeply committed to Venice political activism as I did.

John was an inspiration. My hat is off to him and to his memory.

If anyone would like to donate any materials associated with John...essays, letters, poetry, photos...., I would be glad to accept such and put that away for safe keeping in the Venice Archives, Special Collections, CSULB. Here it will be safe until Venice gets its own archive. Meanwhile John will be in the good company of another great Southern California political activist and organizer, Dorothy Healy, whose papers are also housed at CSULB. The archives are professionally maintained and open to the public.

I can be reached at: ulanbator@venice-ca.com

–Arnold Springer


Posted: Mon - May 1, 2006 at 01:53 PM          


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