Well, Humboldt County is quite a bastion of left wing activism, so I guess its not too surprising overall. Realistically, all such a law would do is force people to drive to Santa Rosa to talk to a recruiter, hardly destroying the fabric of the republic.This picturesque community among the redwoods, once dubbed "the Berkeley of the north" for its reputation for unabashed liberalism, has repeatedly thumbed its nose at the federal government.
Over the years, its civic leaders have declared this city a sanctuary for military resisters to the Persian Gulf War and barred local enforcement of the Patriot Act. If they had had enough pull, President George W. Bush would have been impeached at least once.
Now Arcata is at it again, with a law blocking the military from recruiting anybody in town under the age of 18. And this time, the law has the backing not of a few City Council activists, but of thousands of voters who went to the polls in November.
On the same day, voters in Eureka, a historically politically staid city a dozen miles away, surprised everybody by approving an identical measure.
"The idea that Humboldt County can fight the federal government is as ridiculous as hell, but goddamn it, we're gonna try," said Winfield "Win" Sample, a World War II veteran turned Orwell-quoting pacifist who brought Arcata's measure to Eureka.
In the past, Arcata's quirky pokes at Washington have been shrugged off as the antics of pot-drenched students and patchouli-scented hippies for whom the '60s never quite died. Passionate, but largely irrelevant.
Heading for court
This time the federal government isn't shrugging. A court hearing is scheduled in Oakland on June 9 on the government's demand that the cities' laws be overturned for seeking powers constitutionally granted to the federal government.
Characteristically anti-war cities, including San Francisco and Berkeley, have tried to battle military recruitment. But nobody can recall a case where a city used the ballot box as a counter-recruitment tool, an act that has broader significance.
"It touches on a couple of core issues that really relate to the foundation of government," said Allen Weiner, a senior lecturer at Stanford Law School. "The questions of what areas belong to the federal government, and what areas belong to the state."
Until November, this town of 18,000 seemed to many residents to be dialing back its rebellious ways, booting some of its more radical activists off the City Council and focusing more on fixing potholes than foreign policy, and Eureka hardly had a history of such obstinacy. Now some in Eureka, where "Support the Troops" ribbons far outnumber the "U.S. Out of Humboldt" bumper stickers more common in Arcata, worry that Arcata's infra-blue attitude is catching on there.
"People's sense of responsibility isn't there anymore," said Michael Hagedorn, a former Marine and father of two teenagers in Eureka who voted against the law. "It's a responsibility of everybody to take care of this country and serve this country. ... That should be instilled in kids."
But others say the anti-recruiting measures appealed to Humboldt County's spirit of self-reliance and self-determination, which harks back to the Gold Rush. Tucked behind a wall of towering redwoods and lacking a railroad link to the Bay Area until 1914, its population was largely cut off from the rest of California.
Today, Highway 101 provides relatively quick access to the urban centers to the south, but the sense of a Redwood Curtain dividing the county from the rest of the state has never completely faded.
"The fact that Eureka followed suit tells me it's more about independent thinking," said Laura Middlemiss, who was born and raised in Arcata, raised three kids there and felt that recruiters calling her kids at home went too far.
"The reason this measure passed in this region is that people don't want to be told what to do."
I can see the economic argument-you're depriving kids of a potential avenue for job seeking-but I tend to roll my eyes at the appeal to patriotism.