A new voice for the disaffected-Peace And Freedom Activists Highlighted In Napa

A new voice for the disaffected-Peace And Freedom Activists Highlighted In Napa

http://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/article_9cae2d22-ae67-11df-abc2-001cc4c002e0.html
A new voice for the disaffected

JILLIAN JONES jjones(at)napanews.com | Posted: Monday, August 23, 2010 12:00 am
Lynnette Petersen, chair of the Napa County Peace and Freedom Party, takes pride in helping start a local chapter of an alternative political party with a rich history. “I think it’s neat because I'm making change in a positive way with other people in the community,” Petersen said. Jorgen Gulliksen/Register
A young new brew of social activism is simmering in Napa, its origins rooted in the intersection of politics and art.
This new faction of the Napa political scene is clamoring to give voice to disaffected youth with a grudge against the status quo.
“The last year-and-a-half, there’s been a lot more activism in Napa; I would say the start of a movement,” said Alix Shants, an outspoken 22-year-old from St. Helena who recently burst onto the local political scene.
“It started like an art movement that got to thinking about social issues, and a faction of that started to head toward a social justice direction,” Shants said. “That merged with people who are primarily focused on social justice as well.”
Shants, a writer, musician and visual artist, was one of a handful of Napa Valley College students to head up the school’s new Students for a Democratic Society earlier this year. With about 50 students on the mailing list, these young Napans meet weekly and participate in demonstrations such as the March protest against cuts to education and a march last month through downtown Napa against Arizona’s controversial new immigration law.
Shants is also working with fellow Napa Valley College student Lynnette Petersen — the 23-year-old Napan who launched a stalled campaign for Napa City Council earlier this year —to form the Napa County Peace and Freedom Party.
The initial idea behind the local Peace and Freedom Party was to generate a base for Petersen’s City Council campaign, Shants said.
“She wanted some sort of a base to back her up,” said Shants, a registered member of the Peace and Freedom Party. “We thought the campaign could be a way of bringing these ideas to the mainstream political dialogue.”
Now, even with Petersen out of the race due to “personal reasons,” the two are working to get the group off the ground.
“We still think the message is important to get out there. We think it’s a message that no one else is really expressing,” Shants said.
So what is the message these young activists are hoping to spread?
“We’d like to see people be persistent in their dreams and goals toward having a better lifestyle,” Petersen said, “toward having a better society.”
That means a commitment to socialism, democracy, feminism and unionism, according to the Napa County Peace and Freedom Party’s website, peaceandfreedom,org, and a “common opposition to capitalism, imperialism, racism, sexism and elitism.”
Now a month in, the group has about
30 members, Petersen said, most of them students.
They hold meetings every Wednesday at the college, with Petersen leading the group as interim chairwoman. Their first organized event was a small protest last week in front of Auberge du Soleil, the Rutherford hotel where Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband is known to have business dealings.
“We (were) just pointing out things like she has stated she wanted to clean up the swamp of congressional corruption, yet she’s a part of it now,” Petersen said.
“In our minds, we sort of brought the struggle to their front door so they saw that there are people in Napa that are bothered that those with affluence can have advantage over those with less affluence,” Shants added.
It’s not a message that people in Napa are used to hearing, Shants insists, making it all the more important to say.
“Historically speaking, Napa was always a blue-collar, working-class town,” Shants said. “When the wine industry got big, you started to see a bigger divide with those with affluence and those without any.”
“There are really two communities in Napa,” he posits. “You have the people that own the vineyards that go to The French Laundry, and then you have those on the ground, working-class people, students. Their interests aren’t really heard to the same extent.”
All the pieces are in place to make sure this message is heard, Shants said.
“Napa’s a really small town. So if you put a strong and articulate message out there, it’s not incredibly difficult to create some waves,” he said. “I also feel like there’s a sort of movement coming that will give that message validity.”
It also makes sense that young artists would be the ones to bring that message to the forefront, Shants said.
“Artists have always been the people who were not afraid to say things that other people weren’t ready to hear,” he said. “We see social activism as the next step.”
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Posted in Local on Monday, August 23, 2010 12:00 am Updated: 8:53 pm.