Public Comment

Joel D. Eis is rarity among writers. Like San Francisco poet Laurence Ferlinghetti, he is both an author and the owner of a bookstore. Eis has published three books on the intersection of theatre and politics and is also the proprietor of the Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael.

Eis has now published an autobiography called "Standin' in a Hard Rain" (the title pays homage to Bob Dylan's ferocious ballad, "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall). This exceptional book documents Eis' hard-rockin' life as a Sixties Radical (who is still a radical in his '70s).

Like the widely traveled Eis, this book covers a lot of ground—beginning with his childhood in a New York family rooted in local labor struggles and left-wing politics and recording the cross-country adventures that lead to coming-of-age struggles on the campuses of the Bay Area and in the fields of the state's oppressed farmworker communities.

"Hard Rain" is a compelling read—a 421-page rap sheet that is recounts bruising adventures in street-level politics while rhapsodizing about the curative powers of resistance—from campus protests, to anti-draft activity, to political theatre. 

Imagine if everybody who lived a full and rambunctious life invested the time it would take to chronicle their adventures. Eis has done it with accessible clarity and an unflagging supply of chatty commentary. Reading "Hard Rain" is like listening to the guy across the table from you at the local bar. 

There's so much history on tap here that Eis' book contains 10 Sections and 48 chapters—from "Jew Boy" to "Billy Clubs, Not Books," to "Going to Court, Fresno County Jail" to "David Harris at Vets Against the War." The book also features more than 60 pages of photographs and documents from Eis' extensive memoir. 

(Here's a bit of an "inside joke." If you take a close look at the book's cover photo showing Eis being arrested, you can spot a stamp mark in the lower right corner that reads: "Property of Fresno Police Dept. Do Not Remove." Yep. Eis filched the photo from the prosecutor's file at the end of his trial for protesting in a "tumultuous manner.") 

Between the pages of this thick autobiography you'll rub shoulders with folks like David Harris, Joan Baez, Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis, and Luis Valdez while revisiting a slew of progressive battlegrounds—including the police-state confrontations that arose around the Student Strike at SF State, the Fresno Draft Resistance Movement, and the Battle for People's Park. Eis' personal, on-site recollections are so evocative you can almost smell the tear-gas. 

In his book, Eis characterizes the deadly, military crackdown over People's Park as "a terrible sign of the tragic disconnect between the government and the people…. People's Park was about everything we held sacred. The Battle of People's Park is still a ragged scar of memory and a political flash point sixty years later." 

As Eis writes: "You can't get an more American than a fight over land. You can't get an more revolutionary that planting something that grows." 

Throughout these varied struggles, Eis constantly relies on his theatrical experience—as a writer, director, and performer—to create on-the-spot agit-prop events that draw crowds, deliver analysis, propose action, and provide spiritual fuel for resistance and revolution. 

I have to confess that I have not yet completed my journey through this book but I have to wind up this review with a time-sensitive announcement: Joel Eis will be participating in this Sunday's Bay Area Book Festival in downtown Berkeley, 11AM-5PM (www.BayBookFest.org). You can find Eis tabling at post #105. 

PS: If you miss the Festival and aren't up for a drive to the Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael, Berkeley's Revolution Books has additional copies on hand.