Midpeninsula Free University - Community and Political Involvement

Community and Political Involvement

The MFU brought together in classes and at meetings the diverse, overlapping and sometimes divergent, strains of the local counterculture—artists, crafts-people, writers, leftists, pacifists, dissatisfied liberals, disaffected street-people, environmentalists, people involved or interested in mysticism, computers, encounter, drugs, rock music and sexual freedom. It also supported, publicized, and collaborated with other countercultural organizations on the Midpeninsula and throughout the Bay Area.

The character of the MFU was defined as much by the concrete struggles and controversies it confronted as by its declared aims and goals. There was, first of all, its unsuccessful quest for a much needed community center. A site was found, but at the last moment the landlord, a prominent Palo Alto lawyer, reneged. That led to a peaceful demonstration and a series of street concerts featuring local rock bands. Not long after, the MFU was denied the right to hold one of its regular be-ins at a city park. It further antagonized the already hostile city fathers and the conservative Palo Alto Times by going to court, having Palo Alto's park ordinance declared unconstitutional, and holding its Be-In as scheduled. All of this occurred as opposition to Stanford's involvement in war related research was crystallizing. MFU members participated in the protests and sit-ins which ultimately—after injunctions, mass arrests and trials—resulted in Stanford divesting itself of the Stanford Research Institute and eliminating ROTC. While all that was happening, the MFU—along with Kepler's Books, the local Kennedy Action Corps headquarters, the Resistance, and the home of a Palo Alto Councilmember who supported gun control—became the target of a series of firebombings, conducted by a right-wing group calling themselves the Society of Man.