Jerry Mander passes on

Left to right: Muriel MacDonald (Sunrise activist), OCR Media & Marketing VP Daniela Huson, OCR Director Michael Stocker, Jerry Mander, Brower Youth Awardee Mackenzie Feldman, Sunrise Movement West Coast training coordinator Sally Morton

Jerry Mander, an amazing man, just recently passed into the Spirit World. We can thank him for the Grand Canyon – which would have been turned into a lake to provide energy to Arizona had it not been for his work with “Arch Druid” David Brower in stopping the Department of the Interior from dam(n)ing it up.

Jerry has been one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s more influential intellectuals, using his systematic thinking to flavor the region’s humanist tendencies, and questioning the many orthodoxies of our western social and economic thought.

His career started out in advertising. The short story was that he didn’t see the product of his work being socially healthful, so he pivoted his efforts toward social and environmental good. Working with Sierra Club director David Brower against the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) plans of damming the Grand Canyon, their campaign ultimately saved this World Wonder from being inundated – toward urbanizing Arizona. (Their success angered DOI Secretary Stuart Udall so much, that he had the Sierra Club’s “Not for Profit” certification revoked.)

Later on he founded Berkely think-tank The International Forum on Globalization, and with Doug Tompkins, founded the “Foundation for Deep Ecology.” Both of these organizations took on the societal assumptions driving global civilization and economies, providing intellectual footholds to navigate through them, or spin them in more productive directions.

I was introduced to his work by way of Godfrey Reggio – who by way of attracting interesting souls and minds, produced the iconic cinematic poem, Koyaaniqatsi. I worked on the film with music producer Michael Hoenig (Tangerine Dream) and was delighted to be in truly unique production  setting. As we massaged the film into meaning, we would have these Friday production meetings where Godfrey would invite good minds to view and discuss the progress of the piece.

These assemblies pulled together people such as Lewis Hyde, Hopi elder Grandfather David Monongye, and Jerry Mander, to discuss with our production crew ideas that seeded the arc of the movie – and why, I suspect, it remains in play 40 years after its release.

Jerry wrote a number of influential books, probably the most widely read is his “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television” which, while published in 1978, remains a relevant, stark warning about substituting the hearth for the screen.

I will miss running into him in some of the intersecting circles we inhabited, but his influence remains a vital part of the Bay Area intellectual fabric.