Just after Nixon was re-elected in 1972, Gary Snyder appeared at the Brockport Writers Forum and read a poem called “Long Hair.”
In the poem, the deer catch human beings. The hunters eat the deer, but there’s a catch.
Then the deer is inside the man. He waits and hides in there, but the man doesn’t know it. When enough deer have occupied enough men, they will strike all at once. … This is called “takeover from the inside.”
The scholarly hosts of the program, put on by the State University of New York at Brockport, asked Snyder about his politics. The part of Snyder’s reply that struck me was his call for “intense participation in local politics.” It’s the idea that one person, by getting elected to a city council or a school board, can start working for change from the bottom up. That one coffee-drinking group, by focusing on one local issue, can build credibility with the larger community, open discussions that were presumed closed and change minds.
Or, as Snyder said, “takeover from the inside.”
You’d probably expect an old newspaper editor to say this: I believe that national change starts with community change. Local work is hard work and most people don’t want to do it. I don’t think there’s any way around it.
• Sources and notes: A recording of Gary Snyder at the Brockport Writers Forum is at:
https://youtu.be/EsX9cTDFXKs?si=RzNBm2vlcdr6DQvs
“Long Hair” starts at 6:55. Snyder’s remarks about local politics begin around 12:40.
Michael Leddy’s recent post on “Gary Snyder’s notebooks and journals” led me down the rabbit hole. His post is here:
https://mleddy.blogspot.com/2025/01/gary-snyders-notebooks-and-journals.html
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