One of the major conclusions of all of the studies of what happened in Isla Vista in 1970 was that Isla Vista residents felt powerless to affect public policies both nationally and locally. They were perpetual victims of political and economic forces beyond their control. And the complicity of the UCSB administration and the County in creating these circumstances was too painfully obvious.
Thus, it wasn't the riots that created a community out of Isla Vista; it was what happened in response to the riots, as residents joined together to create and sustain organizations that insulated them from the harshest of outside political and economic forces. Across the nation, young people were developing an "alternative life-style" to a Corporate Amerika whose pollution was
killing the planet and whose international quest for resources continually immersed it in imperialistic wars. "Youth Culture" is what UCSB Sociology Professor Dick Flacks termed this rapidly emerging alternative society in his widely read book by the same title.
In Isla Vista, with its heavy concentration of young people,
and with the solidarity among them forged in the intensity of
the six months of civil strife, this idealism unleashed a community-building
and self-determination movement that would characterize I.V.
for many years to come.
Residents of the time felt that here was a little piece of the planet in which--with a lot of hard work--they could build a viable and semi-independent community whose new institutions would reflect the new values of the youth culture.
The vision was one of a community as a laboratory of social change: a training ground for its continually revolving citizens--young; idealistic, with few vested interests--who were coming in contact with the newest ideas in Western civilization at one of its better universities, and also getting a hands-on education building new institutions.
These residents (upon graduation) would be shot like missiles out into the larger society as experienced change agents--harbingers of a new society in the making. This was a most radical, and
yet very peaceful plan for creating a new America.
Like a phoenix rising out of the fire that consumed the Bank of America building--the most obvious symbol in town of the dominant culture--Isla Vista's unique experiment began to be implemented.
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