Death of a Fanatic

There will be those who, even after her death, can barely bring themselves to say sweet words about Shirley Solomon.

They will say well, yes, she played a large part in preventing oil drilling in the Pacific Palisades.

They will say she was sincere and worked hard and truly believed Earth was in jeopardy from profiteers who were destroying its fragile environment.

They will say that despite rejection by those who found her brassy and doctrinaire, she never lost sight of her essential goal, to save the shoreline from destruction.

But they will also remember being shoved aside by her, run over by her, ignored by her and dismissed by her.

Shirley Solomon rarely waited for majority approval. She moved toward her goals like an army of tanks, and heaven help the functionaries who blocked her path.

She was, by her own definition, “an impossible goddamn woman” whose furious commitment to a derrick-free coast made her an unpredictable ally and an awesome foe.

If pursuit of her goal meant she stood alone, then, by God, alone she would stand, and alone she often stood.

Which is why I sing her song today.

Shirley Solomon died of cancer last week at age 69, and while her death caused no tidal surges along the coast, it should have. Shirley was the ocean’s best friend.

I met her a few years after she joined No Oil, the organization that successfully stopped Occidental Petroleum from drilling for oil along Pacific Coast Highway.

She was at the height of her cyclonic powers then, single-handedly fighting “Oxy,” battling bureaucratic red tape, writing hundreds of letters, making thousands of phone calls.

Her style was confrontational, her manner often abrupt. A city councilman threw her out of his office in a rage, colleagues called her a fanatic and adversaries suspected she was bonkers.

Shirley was philosophical about the criticism. “What’s important,” she said to me once, “is not that men be pacified but that nature be preserved.”

She came to the fight on nature’s behalf in 1970 when the city traded land with Occidental for future oil drilling in the Pacific Palisades.

On the day the story appeared, Shirley went into a frenzy. She distributed thousands of copies to anyone she could think of, from politicians to supermarket clerks.

“The idea that they were going to destroy a beautiful area by drilling for oil made me crazy,” she said. “I got committed fast.”

Almost simultaneously, No Oil was being formed, and inevitably they came together. There were other members, but Shirley made it quickly known. She was No Oil.

Over the next few years, she elevated neighborhood protest into a battle cry and created an army where none had stood before.

One saw her as a kind of female Uncle Sam, pointing and glaring. Join the Ecological Marines. Fight to save the ocean. Shirley Solomon Wants You!

Shirley quite simply badgered you into joining. Her talents lay not in her ability to persuade, but in her sheer mind-bending relentlessness.

She overwhelmed new members into submission and, so doing, amassed support for No Oil with such kinetic energy that the Palisades campaign against oil drilling became a national symbol of community resistance.

David was fighting Goliath again, and David’s name was Shirley Solomon.

She made No Oil seem important by the simple expediency of distributing honorary memberships to important people, and cast her battle in a light that brightened L.A.’s environmental movement as few events ever have.

Even Occidental was forced to admit it had never faced such an elemental force as Shirley Solomon. She was a thunderstorm. She was a hurricane.

No one that strong and that committed wins only applause. She was bound to make enemies, even among friends. Her leadership in No Oil weakened and then ended. Years later, when I asked her how it happened, she simply shrugged and said her part of the job was over.

That was probably true. The kind of abrasive, fire-breathing activism Shirley offered wasn’t enough anymore. Flamboyance had served its purpose. Now lawyers were required. A quieter kind of diplomacy prevailed.

The impossible goddamn woman was gaveled into silence.

But Shirley Solomon ought not to be forgotten. She was unique in her commitment, and Occidental’s failed effort to win final approval for drilling in the Palisades attests to her efforts and her beliefs.

She died on Oct. 17, the day the earth shook in California. Her death on a day of natural calamity seemed significant. It was Shirley’s way of saying goodby.