Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey

¶ … Monkey Wrench Gang," by Edward Abbey [...] issue, where does Monkey Wrenching (the type of political activity in the Monkey Wrench Gang) fit into protest politics as a bridge to mass movement politics? Is Monkey Wrenching a part of the fabric of participatory democracy? Monkey Wrenching is clearly extraordinary politics, but does it have a place in our participatory representative democracy?

THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG

Participation in America may seem like a dying art, but every day, thousands of Americans participate in their communities, take care of others, and spout their political beliefs for the betterment of all. From grandmothers who read to children in their local library, to college student protesting the war in Iraq, citizens in America have the right to change the world, one person at a time. Edward Abbey's "The Monkey Wrench Gang" is a novel of participation at its best. The motley gang of four who travel the western U.S. Monkey Wrenching construction sites and sites of man's "progress" are true participants in life, hoping to make a difference in their beloved buttes and mesas of the desert Southwest. "Keep it like it was" is their motto, and non-violent violence is their core. They hope to influence other lovers of nature, the desert, and natural beauty to rise up and burn a billboard or two, sabotage a bulldozer, or protest development in the name of Monkey Wrenching the political system, and changing the course of desert history. Did they succeed? No. The abominable Glen Canyon Dam still stands as a monument to the ultimate waste and stupidity. Yet ultimately, Abbey's gang did indeed influence political thought processes, for even ultra conservative Barry Goldwater, an early proponent of the dam, came to admit, "that its construction had been a terrible mistake" (Brinkley, Introduction xx).

The four members of the Monkey Wrench Gang are at once dysfunctional and disarming. George Washington Hayduke hates developers, and believes in pulling up any survey stake he can find, just to throw the developers off course. Doc Sarvis is a well-educated heart specialist with a penchant for burning down billboards. Bonnie Abbzug is the New York Jew transplant in love with the west - and Doc, and Seldom Seen Smith is a jack Mormon boatman who hates the dam with everything he's got - even his three wives. Together they form a union of four who love the west, and hate its "Californication" by developers, greedy miners, and clueless tourists. They want to change the way people look at the open spaces left in the west, and they do it by quietly subverting developers' machinery, pulling up survey stakes, and generally wreaking havoc with anyone who wants to change their land. "Keep it like it was." The establishment sees them as dangerous radicals who want to destroy progress, but environmentalists came to call them champions, showing what the work of a few can mean to many when it comes to a struggle for what is right and wrong. They represent anyone who has stood up to fight against something they strongly believed in - from the American Revolution to the war in Iraq. "Dangerous radicals" have stood up and been counted for hundreds of years in America, it is one of the things which sets up apart as a free nation. That four unique and divergent individuals could come together and join together into a well-oiled desert disaster squad says as much about Americans as it does about love of the land. The desert southwest was on an unalterable path, and the Monkey Wrenchers wanted to stop its headlong voyage toward destruction. In the same way path dependency defines not the best but the most popular, the Monkey Wrench Gang defines the path toward social change by not the best or most popular route, but the route that will make people stand up and take notice. The Monkey Wrenchers are participatory democracy at its best, for they not only participate in their own brand of social revolt, they encourage an entire generation of real people to work to save the west. Part heroes and part anti-heroes, they struggle against the establishment and define the nature of civil disobedience that is non-violent and yet quickly gets its point across.