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It used to be, when I got a phone call from Mickey Flacks, I cringed. “Oh, God,” I’d say to myself, “What did I do wrong now?” To find out, Mickey and I would meet over a cup of coffee somewhere. And she’d tell me. No one ever accused Mickey of being shy. Her beef with me — at least in the beginning — was typically the same. “You’re getting cynical,” she’d object. “Don’t get cynical. We don’t need cynical. We need real reporting.” Mickey didn’t mind if I disagreed with her. But she had no patience with cynicism.
We all need guardian angels. And with warnings like that, Mickey Flacks was one of mine.
Mickey had few illusions. She recognized that some of the fools in town were on her side. And she could roll her eyes with the best of them. But in a world ruled by friction, gravity, and inertia, perfection, she’d caution, is not a reasonable expectation. Focus on the problem. “What are the facts?” she’d ask. “Are there any solutions? Focus on them. What are the facts? Report them. Don’t be cute.”
But above all, don’t be cynical.
Mickey Flacks died five years ago at the age of 80. For more than 55 of those years, Mickey functioned as a foundational force for what would become — over a lifetime of sustained head-banging — Santa Barbara’s sprawling constellation of progressive organizations. Affordable housing; tenants’ rights; environmental protection; social justice; free speech; and music, theater, movies, sports, and green parks. Those were her issues.
In those 55 years, she and her husband — UCSB sociologist Dick Flacks — played a pivotal role changing Santa Barbara from what it used to be: a sleepy beach town run by a conservative bastion of the GOP.
Yes, Mickey was a red-diaper baby from New York City, the child of Jewish radicals who instructed her to tell the FBI agents to pound sand when they showed up, which they invariably did. But her politics were always more egalitarian and practical than they ever were about ideology.
She recognized Santa Barbara for the beauty it was and that it should stay beautiful, but beautiful for everyone: the rich, the poor, and everybody in between. Housing should be about shelter, not just speculative investment opportunities for the well-to-do. She never shut up. She never backed down. And she never stopped showing up. That was her genius.
But of course, it was never hers alone. It was always part of a genuine and miraculously self-sustaining collaborative partnership between Mickey and Dick that’s lasted more than two lifetimes. In their division of labor, Mickey magnanimously allowed Dick to take care of the world. She would save Santa Barbara from itself.
In this vein, Dick and Mickey functioned as legal trustees for the Santa Barbara News & Review, one of the precursor publications from which the Independent would eventually spring. Mickey took it upon herself to educate young reporters — especially those new to town — about the community’s ever-dynamic idiosyncrasies. In a place where south is really west, not everything is as obvious as it might seem.
When COVID hit the fan, the Independent nearly hit it too. Our advertisers disappeared en masse, as did advertisers everywhere. Before the federal government stepped in to bail out small businesses, the Independent’s survival was anything but certain.
Into this void stepped the Mickey Flacks Journalism Fund for Social Justice, which is housed with the nonprofit SBCAN to accept and direct countless small — and some sizable — donations into a sustaining fund for local journalism. Without this help, it’s questionable whether the Independent could have made payroll for many of its editorial staff. Even with COVID now over, local journalism here — and pretty much everywhere — finds itself still struggling.
With the generous donations of our readers to the Mickey Flacks Journalism Fund, we have been able offer paid fellowships to reporters covering topics such as Santa Barbara’s housing needs and how the oil industry operates in our county.
The journalism fund helps cover the cost of reporting; it doesn’t select the stories, though they must fall within the rubric of social justice. These are the stories any self-respecting Santa Barbara publication would and should cover. The Mickey Flacks Journalism fund helps make that happen.
Mickey’s been dead now five years. I can still hear her. “What are the facts? Report them.”
We’re trying. The secret to staying alive in journalism isn’t exactly rocket science. Journalism takes work. It requires curiosity. It requires stamina. It requires an infusion of funds — from our advertisers and from the community.
But it also requires the breath of life. A spirit of celebration. Mickey and Dick recognized that. They made a point to go to the movies. To go to football games. To live life. Mickey, as fierce and forbidding as she could be, was known to don a wig from time to time to impersonate various folk singers.
In a similar vein, the Independent is hosting a celebratory fundraiser — Backyard Brunch — this Saturday afternoon at the historic Rancho La Patera & Stow House in Goleta. General admission is $75. If you’re feeling like a very important person — and we hope you are — $105 gets you the secret decoder gummy wrist-band.
The brunch will offer no fewer than 17 well-known vendors providing great food, wine, ice cream, baked goods, coffee, and beer — you name it, it’s there. For those inclined to lawn sports, there will be cornhole, ladder ball, and spikeball. The Brasscals — a 17-piece controlled musical explosion — will be putting some serious wind in everybody’s sails.
So please show up. Everyone’s invited.
Santa Barbara journalism needs the support. And we all need an excuse to make some noise and have some fun.
And when you show up, just say Mickey sent you. You won’t be lying.
Backyard Brunch is happening April 12, noon-3:30pm. Tickets are available at sbindytickets.com.
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