Well, ever since I got a copy of my local roadkill phone list, I've been keeping my eyes open. A lump in the road one recent wintry evening proved to be a freshly killed raccoon. Poor bugger. Fucking cars. I was thinking about the kids and Mr. Coon who'd be worried that mom wasn't coming home that evening.

I called up Steffan and admitted my long-held scheme of gifting him a roadkill coon and instructions for making a hat as a Do-It-Yourself Coonskin Cap Kit. He dragged himself out of bed and down the hill to help me skin it. He provided the expertise, me the inept enthusiasm.

It was late, so we didn't save the meat, but what I thought would cause me considerable squitch -- looking at wildlife from the inside -- didn't at all. I was pretty certain I'd be grossed out, barely able to wrestle my imagination into images of eating this animal in a survival situation. Plus I've eaten veggie for a few years now. But when we opened it up, I took one look at the smooth red muscle, the marbled fat and my first thought was "Meat!"

Hard work carefully skinning a coon. We finished about one in the morning. Skinning the coon, but not dressing the meat, nor prepping the pelt for tanning -- we were doing a bare minimum to save the soft dense raccoon pelt. Exhausted, we rolled up the pelt and put it in the freezer to wait for a day when we'd have time to tan it.

Brains, they say, are the best. Hence the backwoods aphorism: Every animal has just enough brains to tan it's hide.

Wow, we did it! Congratulations. That was something. And the street party was spectacular. I'm proud to have a small part in this large doings by all y'all.

No police interference, no problems. Unabashedly positive press afterward (even in the Sentinel: tinyurl.com/u97hl) Parade people blocked streets and redirected traffic. The parade cleaned up after itself, taking care of litter and debris. Thousands of people came out. Looked like people were 3 deep on the sidelines and the parade stretched through most of downtown.

Check out the photos on Indymedia (indybay.org/santacruz) or in the gallery on the Last Night website (lastnightdiy.org).

I'm thinking, next time, let's see if we can get more musical groups and performance and interactivity down for the street party. The drum circle thing was alright, but after an hour I was ready for some other action.

If we could recruit musical groups to play in all the nooks and crannies around Cooper Square, that'd be swell. Like the folk-punk band Blackbird Raum that played later in the evening, or the marimba band that played earlier. Imagine being able to wander over to the Octogon Building and hear an awesome Zydeco band rockin' it in that little courtyard and then down to the jewelry store by the coffee roasting company and catching a brilliant acapella group. What if the Brazen Squaredance Association blew into the square sweeping up people as it went along.

Just some thoughts. What are yours?

Rico

A . L A S T . N I G H T . M A N I F E S T O

Last Night is a decentralized, collective, spontaneous, open, public New Year's Eve celebration in Santa Cruz, California. Last Night is a completely organic event, organized and put on at a grassroots-level. No city-sponsorship. No corporate donors. It’s a do-it-yourself (D.I.Y.) parade and celebration.

We write this manifesto in the spirit of understanding, in an attempt to communicate our intentions. The parade is not merely a celebration, but a celebration of the power that we all have when we gather together to make something happen. Not just a street party, but a party to reclaim our streets.

Last Night started in 2005 as a response to the implosion of the city-sponsored First Night celebration. Elsewhere that year, the government abandoned millions of poor people in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. Last Night was also a commemoration of the do-it-yourself spirit of those surviving communities.

That year, thousands of people came out to participate in the people’s parade that marched raucously up Pacific Avenue. The parade included the Santa Cruz Trash Orchestra, martial arts displays, firedancers, the Santa Cruz Peace Coalition, Indonesian music, drum circles, floats, and the Opera Lady. The parade was high-energy and peaceful. There were no conflicts with police who’s light presence remained far on the periphery. The parade and it’s organizers represented a broad cross-section of the community.

In a typical overreaction of authority to the threat of people taking responsibility in their own lives, the Santa Cruz Police Department deployed undercover officers to infiltrate parade planning meetings for three months. Records released after the spying scandal came to light, revealed a pattern of abuses, including monitoring unrelated groups and other first amendment activities and compiling police dossiers of organizers. The city's own police auditor determined that police had violated the civil rights of parade organizers. After six months of effort, community, activist, and ACLU involvement, the city put in place a weak policy to curb some of the abuses of police power.

The celebration is decentralized -- no one person or group is making it happen. There is no central committee nor board of directors. No one is in charge, but we are all leaders. Decisions about route and timing and other tactical matters are made collectively by those willing to step up and make it happen. Collective simply means we all do it together.

The celebration is spontaneous -- we are not asking for permits and permission, nor are there any limits on participation. No one is in a position to restrict who can participate or in what way. People simply show up prepared to take part in a city-wide celebration. Our entire community is invited to participate and celebrate together.

The focus is on self-reliance. One of the most important aspects of the Last Night celebration is that people take responsibility for themselves and for their community. As such, parade "un-organizers" take pains to address issues such as security, traffic control, sanitation, clean-up, and police liaison.

Beyond the impossible barrier of the city's arduous and prohibitively expensive special event permit, the permit process itself is a racket. It is the process through which the city seeks to charge us for the privilege of exercising our rights to free speech and free assembly. Accepting a permit puts one person or group in the position of having to put controls on other people, lest someone damage their good standing with the authorities. Additionally, that person or group takes responsibility and liability for the actions of others. We don't want to be in that position, nor do we want someone to have that responsibility for us.

We want to live in a world full of play and celebration, where self-expression is a matter of course. A world full of surprises, in which relationships are authentic and open-ended. A world in which we share a direct connection to the world around us. Where one does not have to ask permission of authorities to realize one’s dreams of adventure and possibility.

Part of creating a new world is resistance to the old one, to the relentless commodification and control of everything, including celebration and the way we relate to each other.

When we ask permission to live our lives, to celebrate, to come together, to express dissent, we legitimate the power of institutions over us. We give up our power to make our own choices and become subject to the decisions of others who may or may not be acting in our interests.

Therefore, we are not seeking permits from the city. We refuse to ask permission to be free.

Love and Celebration,

Last Night Santa Cruz

I miss the smell of the pepper trees on the dirt roads where I grew up. Maybe the tangy scent of vegetation baking in the desert sun mixed with dust. Every once in a while I just get a wave of nostalgia. I miss going with my grampa to town on a searing hot afternoon, curled up on the floor of the passenger seat and turning all the air conditioning vents toward me. We always stopped at the Circle-K for a push-up pop. How can I describe for you the color -- that certain color -- of pepper trees with their dusty washed-out green, the thin leaves, the wrinkly red and white berries, the scraggly flaky bark.

I miss the Harmony Inn with it's checked vinyl table cloths where we'd sometimes go out for pizza and grampa would give me a quarter for 3 songs and I'd punch in Freddy Fender, B J Thomas, and Jim Croce. And my family would say, "God, please, no, not Before The Next Teardrop Falls again!" A sappy melancholic romantic even then.

The horses at the mini-mart several miles away over those low hills, and still I'd bike ride there just to give the horses a sugar cube. And the dirt street out in the middle of nowhere whose street name was -- my name -- was stenciled in black on a piece of up-ended concrete sewer pipe. And the chain link fence behind it with the fencing company sign -- my middle name. So the corner was especially mine, with my name prominently displayed WESLY ALLEN even if the spelling was a little funny. And that freedom of being there, no where in particular nor on the way to anywhere in particular, just a dirt road in the country, one of many around, that I could ride on just because I could.

And the postoffice, down that road I think, where until they had mailbox delivery at the end of the road, honey and grampa had to get their mail from a PO Box. And one time near there, I remember -- an old house with old stone work -- my grandmother who reveled in her rebellious spirit drove right through someone's orchard in the old Impala and picked an apple by merely rolling down her car window.

The old people who lived in the dark tree-shrouded Victorian across the field. The cool of their house on a blistering summer day. Lemonade. Their peacocks always with the anxious cat cries all through the long afternoons.

The field where oats were grown, and where my uncle shot his .22 rifle at the coffee can on a stick, where mysteriously a machine came each fall and ate all the grass and pooped out hay bales. My hatred of foxtails because of the inevitable ritual of picking hundreds out of my socks. I explored everywhere and nowhere. With my kid's attention, I am missing whole swaths of recollection -- what lay behind that chain link fence? I have no idea -- and remembering some things in such vivid detail it was as if they were yesterday.

I miss the sound of cars on the distant road. Swooooooosh of the tires like nature sounds on the still country air while I fell asleep, my ears jumpy and alert and traveling the neighborhood without me.

Want to join this year's New Year's Eve Parade in Santa Cruz?

There's no First Night this year, so we're going to do it ourselves. It's our parade. It's your parade. No city-sponsorship. No corporate donors. We make it happen together. We're calling it

THE LAST NIGHT SANTA CRUZ DIY PARADE
(diy stands for do-it-yourself)

Let's get a group together. Start a marching band. Build puppets. Get our bicycle friends together. Form a dancing troupe. Organize our kid's play group. Anything and everything!

Committed so far: Art & Revolution, Village Drumming Circles, The Opera Lady, the Santa Cruz Trash Orchestra, the Man in Black, firedancers, stilt walkers, Peace Walk, Santa Cruz Moontribe, puppets, bunnies, clowns, and bike kids. (We'd still like to see Samba bands, marching bands, more music, political groups, a coalition of homeless folks, art cars, zombies, pirates, more kids and parents, and more more of everything in our community)

MEET AT 5PM NEW YEAR"S EVE - SATURN CAFE LOT

I'm missing summer. It is my favorite. Warm sunny days. Drive-in movies. Endless dusky evenings. But I'm prepared to let it go and embrace the beautiful fall. Soups! Pumpkins! Golden leaves. Crisp days. The smell of woodfires. The first tingly smell of rain.

I made a deal with my sweetheart when we first met that if she chose me, I would cook her soups and stews in the winter. So far, five years later, I've made good on my promise every year. Pumpkin soup (secret: after Nov 1, you can get as many pumpkins for as cheaply as you want). Barley lentil stew. Bean soups. Minestrone (a meal in liquid form). A thousand soups, a million soups to woo my lover.