Rebecca Solnit: Resisting Monoculture - Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

do forgive me for posting so much of Solnit's work recently, but she is on a roll describing the upheavals that we are facing in the industrial world these days. 

Solnit has written of the Google protests throughout and describes what is really at stake in the quote below and in the link. This piece was a response to a badly researched criticism of one of her original pieces.

I’m seeing the town that gave birth to the Sierra Club and Rainforest Action Network and seminal movements for human rights, a town that produced great insurrection and antiwar activism and idealism and new social ideas, become a place where you can’t afford to live unless you’re doing something incredibly lucrative and time-consuming—and probably involving technology corporations.
A young human rights activist is not so likely to be able to afford to live here, or a nurse’s aide, or a baker, and so the biodiversity of the city is being laid waste, and in its place springs up a monocrop of technology workers. If this continues, the contributions San Francisco has given the world will not be given any more.

Rebecca Solnit: Resisting Monoculture - Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

Brand on revolution

"Now there is an opportunity for the left to return to its vital, virile, vigorous origins. A movement for the people, by the people, in the service of the land. Socialism’s historical connection with spiritual principles is deep. Sharing is a spiritual principle, respecting our land is a spiritual principle. May the first, May Day, is a pagan holiday where we acknowledge our essential relationship with our land. I bet the Tolpuddle martyrs, who marched for fair pay for agricultural workers, whose legacy is the right for us to have social solidarity, were a right bunch of herberts if you knew them. “Thugs, yobs, hooligans,” the Daily Mail would’ve called them. Our young people need to know there is a culture, a strong, broad union, that they can belong to, that is potent, virile and alive. At this time when George and Dave pilfer and pillage our land and money for their oligarch mates, at this time when the Tories are taking the EU to court to stop it curtailing their banker pals’ bonuses, that there is something they can do. Take to the streets, together, with the understanding that the feeling that you aren’t being heard or seen or represented isn’t psychosis; it’s government policy. But we are far from apathetic, we are far from impotent. I take great courage from the groaning effort required to keep us down, the institutions that have to be fastidiously kept in place to maintain this duplicitous order. Propaganda, police, media, lies. Now is the time to continue the great legacy of the left, in harmony with its implicit spiritual principles. Time may only be a human concept and therefore ultimately unreal, but what is irrefutably real is that this is the time for us to wake up. The revolution of consciousness is a decision, decisions take a moment. In my mind the revolution has already begun." Brand on revolution

Opposition to St. Claude Healing Center

The Cult of Convenience -- the Mall on St. Claude excerpt:

Your life is so difficult, so demanding. The dues you've paid as a bohemian transplant roughing it in the wilds of downtown New Orleans are immense... people calling for accountability, using the term gentrification, those are just guilt peddlers. Guilt is so last-century. You don't even consider yourself white, really, not deep down.


The gaudily, perpetually brightly lit, thunderously air-conditioned, aromatherapized, McDonaldland-Massacre-paintjob Mall on St. Claude is there. What's done is done. It's there, and my lord, is it convenient! Plus now, if the people hanging around Hank's annoy you or get in your face, you'll have a safe place to run to... thanks to Pres Kabacoff, who created it for that very reason.

Nolaanarcha

My Egypt tis of thee

We must fight the urge to rebuild the systems that have failed us. Halla
Tomasdottir

Thanks be to Mrs. Parker (or some other literary godlike figure) that I live in the age where information is flowing at such a rate that one can hardly stop listening and learning. Watching the attempt to overthrow tyrannical governments in 2 nations this month has been exhilarating. Scary too waiting to see who influences those in the streets...

If we could just go back in time and sit with those founding fathers of ours or any other and tell them to watch a few things while they built a new system of government.

Let me say to begin that my own beliefs are against long term national government structure, and therefore I (underlined heavily) would tell them to go home and work on creating town meeting framework with no one representing more than 2000 people. Each would be elected by direct vote majority, serving 3 years, and each person only one 3 year term every 15 years. That person's work is then to canvass their 2000 people, bring forward the simple majority opinion (and minority opinions).
Then the FF could come back to create a simple annual convention for those people. I know- the country is so large it would now mean a convention of 150,000 people!
I think its possible to legislate what would be needed with this group-it would keep the work at the federal level to infrastructure and defense, as needed, and with a GREAT deal of argument as needed also. And what a cool collection in the capital every year, huh? I envision those 150,000 coming in, going to different meetings to hear and speak on the few issues, and then voting booths set up all over town to cast their vote on behalf of their 2000 people.
But here's also what I would whisper in their ear:

1. Clearly state in the documents that they are meant to be changed by a popular majority when needed. As Benjamin Franklin said at the time,
"Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other....
Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good."

2. Try to understand your own era's evils and leave them out of the stuff.
Also from the Constitution
(Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.)
or:
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
No comment needed.

3. Take your time.
If our articles of government have allowed a mostly peaceful transition of power every 4 years, then we can thank the 11 years it took those guys to get as much right as they did. But if they had provided for a Constitutional Congress to meet again every 50 years, think what might have been.

4. Be clear that you should amend as needed (see above). Our Constitution calls for a popular majority to amend when needed. haven't done that successfully since 1992, but that was for an amendment proposed in 1789 to restrict Congressional pay raises! The 1970s was the next successful amendment era; where is our era's constitutional progress? Unchecked corporate freedom?
Which brings us to the next point:

5. Make it necessary to evaluate and calibrate the balance of power as needed.
In the beginning, Congress (and therefore the states) held the most power. In the 19th century, starting with Andrew Jackson through the end of the 20th century with Ronald Reagan, we saw the expansion of power in the executive branch. Now, we must contend with a judicial branch that is using its safe seat to legislate their own personal agendas.

6. Make it the responsibility of every citizen to spend scholarly time to learn about their government and other forms of government, NOT in a formal school. Allow those between the ages of 7-10 to spend 1 summer reading or visiting governing bodies which would earn them a half year credit (semester) for community college or vocational training at age 16.

All in all, I wish those forming governments well. I know flaws will be a part of the process, as all human endeavors must be. But with time, empathy and logic one might write the new form that affords even more rights and possibilities for their next generations.

Part 6: Living Locally and Globally: The Revolution(s) Will Use Appropriate Technology

I hate Facebook.
Well, actually I don't but those of you who do hate it are now at attention, and those of you who do not are fuming.
Is this to be the big divide in our adult lives- whether we use social networking tools or not? (Because I just don't believe the Tea Party thing is gonna turn out to be the new revolution.)
Let me just say that I worry for those of my friends who buy any new thing or follow every new trend, but I also worry for those who pooh-pooh ideas before testing them. And I find myself in both places at different times, so I'm with you all on different days. Remember, I contain multitudes.

Some clarity came to me recently when a writer with whom I am too often in agreement talked about Twitter. (It's just that I just fear being in agreement with anyone all of the time, especially another in a long line of New Yorker magazine writers). The writer, Malcolm Gladwell, wrote about the Iranian revolution and the reported use of social networking tools at the time to further the cause. Even that some reporters took to calling it the Twitter Revolution. Overstated was his conclusion. He just didn't find it. Sure activists outside of the country were using it, but on the line folks, not so much.

If that was the end of the story, I might have started to think more negatively about things like Twitter et al, but as usual Malcolm went further, adding social theory and mass communication and history lessons. First, he took the story back to the civil rights sit-in movement and shared the information that most of the young people that were sitting together waiting for who-knows-what to happen behind them at those lunch counters knew each other beforehand. Knew each other well as a matter of fact. Were roommates or long time friends. So in that era, he concludes Twitter would also not have mattered.
But before you "aha!" me (you FB haters) he goes on to explain why and thereby changes the story.

In his context, the question is whether that particular activist moment calls for strategic organizing with long meetings and teamwork and leaders on call, or if it needs to build a network of peers to keep up with and share information quickly. Serious support ( like top-secret, password-giving, face-to-face strategy meetings or lessons in how to link arms for hours to stop police from taking some away) is necessary in the type of movement where you need backup and comfort (like Iran or Greensboro circa 1960). In sociology language, high-risk activism is a "strong tie" movement. And on top of that, discipline and strategy are necessary in high-risk activism. Certainly not two words that apply to social networking.

He wrote the story to dismiss social networking, but ends up actually showing its use when he went on to point out (via sociology research) that it is often through acquaintances and not close friends (weak ties) where we get NEW information. He even talks about the diffusion of innovation as the hallmark of any internet based communication. And that leadership is shared.

So, not high-risk activism, but you do find adaptive activism and (oh be still my heart) NON-hierarchical networks in internet or social networking. He dismisses networks as messy and chaotic, but doesn't that describe democracy itself?
(He also overstates the need for complete consensus in networks. He may not know that there is often allowable dissent in group decisions with methods like "stand-aside" or "with reservations".)

So it seems to me that for campaigns that need innovation or ways to keep up with constant information (like an neighborhood-obliterating hospital development, or a consumer campaign to stop a city's water privatization) you might find these tools an excellent strategy.
In other words, based on your campaign, use the appropriate tool and technology needed. And to go back in history, the Free Speech Movement or the anti-nuclear movement might have been helped by the type of tools available to activists today. Lack of information was the killer there, not baton-wielding thugs.

Those who mock FB or Twitter or smart Phones may be the spiritual children of those who mocked the old-fashioned telephone (the one attached to the wall), or fancy schmancy telegrams, or The Pony Express. And while it is true that all of those tools started out as expensive and only for rich people, do remember: long distance calls can be made for free now, the telegram is now an email which can be sent for free (yes, once a computer is found), and the Pony Express became rural free delivery or a postage stamp.

Recently, I found an old book (probably someone's thesis) in a used store. Using the Progressive intellectual movement of the early 20th century, it showed how these individuals used communication strategies to further their movement. Dewey's education movement, Jane Addams' immigrant settlement houses and so on.

They did this because they came from small-town America and so "recognized the forces undermining primary communities (in cities) and sought a replacement for neighborhood solidarity in the form of impersonal controls." (italics added). The author also found that these activists thought that "...Through the new means of communication,the values of intimacy and immediacy would permeate the whole structure of society."

The author used another phrase that struck my ear pleasingly: intimate community.
I hear social networking in that phrase: a type of informal talk that mimics the small town Main Street where everyone would pass at some point in their day or week. Main Street where conversation as small as talk about weather rested alongside of 'hey, watch out for that horse!" warnings.

Why is this important? Because in order to know who carries what information and how trustworthy it is, one needs to have lots of conversations. Lots of small, quick and some not so quick conversations with more people than we have time to call or stop on the street and talk to for 20-30 minutes a day or even once a week. Because we live in a much larger village (and travel at different times of the day now that we don't use daylight as our timepiece) and therefore our tools need to match the speed and the many different paths that our world has for us. And because (One of the areas that Malcolm does not cover) we have to find creative ways to know what the other side knows and share it fast. And the front lines for that is not hierarchical media, but messy Wiki everything.

So, if you find yourself on the front line of a police state protest, I hope your old, true friends are on either side of you with full prior knowledge of what you both must do. And I'd say put down that phone.

And, if you are working to find a way to insert some citizenship in your daily hectic life so as not to lose a cherished building or to take the time to uncover corporate crime, I hope someone has a phone handy with emails of those who could help and a Twitter or a FB account to start posting updates.
Because we need both of those revolutions.

Part 5: Living Locally and Globally-Maybe we are more than one nation anyway?

The Nine Nations of North America by Joel Garreau

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


My boss gave me this book, as we are fascinated at marketumbrella.org by regional differences. Our friends at RAFT (Renewing America's Food Traditions) did a great map of food regions of America in their recent book, which we often use to show how food and culture can be the sovereign organizing principle rather than the political boundaries drawn by surveyors hundreds of years ago.


This book by Joel Garreau was written long before RAFT came to be and the author has thoroughly mapped out the future possibilities and limitations of each of his chosen nations (read regions) in North America. These areas should and often act as nations in his argument, and as he points out, state lines were in many cases quite arbitrarily drawn and yet seemingly encased in stone tablets somewhere. The inability of America to stretch it's thought process beyond weak city governments, stymied state ones and federal overseers is one of the great puzzles in this land and may yet undue us.
I enjoyed it throughout and will recommend it here as only a regional planning or public market geek can: In annoyingly detailed terms when people just want an easy answer.


Each "nation" (I believe less in nations than in city/states, so I wish he could call them that, but I do know that he could not) is defined by some natural geographical boundaries and also by the author’s very interesting analysis of the identification of the lines between cultures. We can do worse than to examine his map with an open mind. As he says early on, "Studying these nations is certainly more constructive that examining ideas such as Colorado."

He writes very well, finding lovely bites of information and great quotes for each nation. Maps included for better description than I give here.

Let me give you just a tidbit for each and leave it to you to read the entire book on your own. Hopefully, you can read it while traveling on a train between 2 or more of these nations so you can see if the same personality is still clear to you when you step off into bustling or sleepy:


The Breadbasket: Area west of Houston, north of Austin, east of Denver, up to Winnipeg and down to Chicago through St. Louis and Tulsa.

The nation that is most at peace with itself.

The Foundry: From DC to Cincinnati (following Ohio River), east of Indy, up to Milwaukee, Green Bay, north to Ottawa, over to Albany, Trenton and down to southern Connecticut.

The whole point of living here is work.

Dixie: Everything north of Ft. Meyers to Houston, up to St. Louis, down to Kentucky and over to DC, everything south.

Sociologically, climatically, historically. politically, topographically racially it’s a quilt.

New England: New Haven, to Providence, Boston, Burlington, Prince Edward Islands, Nova Scotia to Portsmouth.
(Emerson of Thoreau): “He chose to be rich by making his wants few.”

Mexamaerica: Mexico to California (west of Sierra Nevada range), south of Denver, east to Houston.

Binational, bicultural, bilingual.

The Empty Quarter (portion of Saudi Arabia is called Rub ‘al Khali - Empty Quarter).: West of Sierra Nevada, north to Alaska, and over to Lake Winnipeg and down following the Missouri River.

Where the argument between empire and environment lives.

The Islands: South of Ft. Meyers, Keys. Cuba, Puerto Rico

Smugglers paradise.

Ecotopia: Anchorage to Point Conception to north of Sierra Nevada.

Temperate island surrounded by a sea of envy

Quebec:

The most improbable yet the most undeniable nation.

A wonderful book that I am very glad to have read and more importantly, to share.






View all my reviews

Part 4: Living Locally and Globally: The Empathic Civilization

This video gives an extraordinary explanation of the evolution of community. It helps explain how the world may save part of itself. I look at the kids under 20 years--I find that they have a very different attitude about people and the world than those just ahead of them, and different from my generation which was all about personal political and emotional growth. I feel some hope talking to them...
Rifkin theory of evolving empathy

Part 3 Living Locally and Globally: Why I like hippies

When I was growing up in the 1970s, I lived in an "inner ring" suburb of Cleveland, called Lakewood. Lakewood is defined by that fact and by a few other things:
•It is on the shores of Lake Erie.
•It was developed in the 19th century and in the early 20th century.
•It has good schools and libraries.
•It has 2 small shopping/downtown areas running lengthwise across the city.
•It has loads of parks.

These reasons were probably why my mother probably chose the area, and also why I was able to meet so many hippies.
The hippies could rent these large rambling houses together or a room in one and spend their days hanging on the beach or walking down Detroit to the large number of head shops.

If you grew up in the early 1970s or before, you remember when children were not targeted as consumers or even as conversationalists (and also when emotional immaturity was supposed to be left to the playgrounds and schoolyards). So children were expected to be amused by other children and childish things and left out of serious conversations. Unfortunately sometimes it also meant that important issues were not shared with children.
The hippies were the in-between. They knew and cared about the adult issues but still admired childlike simplicity. So, we would wander down to the beach or to the swings or to the library and encounter long haired, bell-bottom wearing happy adults.
They would ask us questions and answer ours.
Hippies explained segregation, the Vietnam war, Watergate and how some drugs were legal and some illegal for no reason. Sometimes they sat quietly, sometimes they read and sometimes they smoked and sang and danced and laughed or yelled or whatever.
They made money to have money to eat and buy drugs. They did not make money to keep it or have a job to get ahead.

So because of the hippies:
I fight formality which seems to divide. I use immaturity as a tactic as they did; to break down barriers with humor that confuses adults. I understand that I am one person in a tribe-a global tribe. I learned about issues that were happening right then and became aware that is was my responsibility to be totally present in my time and tell others.

And if you appreciate:
local food
excellent bread
wearing natural fibers
thrift stores
songs with messages
recycling
wearing jeans
bicycling in your town
cloth diapers
comfortable shoes
cooperative stores or workplaces
free love
hydroponics
Legal Aid or any version of skill sharing without profit
the right to oppose war while not opposing those forced to fight it



Thank a hippie.

Part 2 Living Locally and Globally: Feminism's direct action successes and egghead failures

Another way to view direct action in the 21st century is by looking at well-known 20th century versions. One that I spent a great deal of time emulating, reading about and adding my voice to was the Second Wave womens movement, although I technically came between the Second and the Third! Typical of a child of the 1960s. No movement of our own.
The emergence of that movement did more for the world than just to create Mary Tyler Moore. It took its lessons from the civil rights movement and built its power from organizing in the streets and by bringing uncomfortable issues like discriminatory workplaces, abortion, rape, domestic abuse into this "personal as political" movement. Women told their stories to each other, to legislators and to newspeople until those in power understood that the stories they were hearing were not unique, but the same across generations of women--and that the underlying issues that fashioned these stories needed to be changed.

From "Forty Years of Feminism" (Direct Action, 2008)
Guerrilla theater was used to illustrate some of our points. A live sheep was crowned ‘Miss America’ and paraded on the liberated area of the boardwalk to parody the way the contestants (all women) are appraised and judged like animals at a county fair.
Women are enslaved by beauty standards’ was the theme of another dramatic action — in which some of us chained ourselves to a life-size Miss America puppet. This was paraded and auctioned off by a woman dressed up as a male Wall Street financier. ‘Step right up, gentlemen, get your late model woman right here — a lovely paper dolly to call your very own property ... She can push your product, push your ego, or push your lawnmower ...’”

These early direct action tactics were successful as theater, but also failed because they were viewed as just theater. The failure to be taken seriously came because they were only one-off events, rather than integral issue definitions. The focus on Miss America was odd, since who cared anyway?
And when so many of the egghead (read professional writers, professors) leaders stepped waaay back from these actions as not serious, they did them in.

Add to that the great number of feminists who wiped their hands on their quarterback towel with satisfaction and trotted to the sidelines after seeing Title 9 enacted and Roe v Wade gaveled on the "right" side at the Supreme Court.Even though losing on ERA was a body blow to many who had devoted entire years--maybe even decades to hoping it pass, it never was seriously raised again.

What seemed to deflate all of the good work were the invitations for women to sit at (rather than just to set) the table. As a result, they believed and aligned themselves to hype only: The Year of the Woman and its dependent children: Women on the Supreme Court, Women as Vice-Presidential candidate, Women in Boardrooms. Women on Top.

Following hype, the other barriers to widespread success in no particular order:

First: The movement remained viable only in highly educated countries.

Also: Lessons were not easily or ever shared with younger activists. Or vice versa.

Importantly: Economic divisions were not understood. Blue collar women just stayed at work and were left there to struggle on their own (except for Hollywood's romantic portrayal of them) except for a brief heyday of 9 to 5 the Working Womens organization, until it was swallowed whole by traditional unions, to the delight of its founders.

Additionally: One or two organizations tried too hard to hold power and by mimicking their brethren, lost all of it. Of course, they got a glossy magazine out of it. And a new signature choice.



The good news is that within local cells and groups, success continued because of the adherence in them to democratic values and networking. The local groups believed in active support to each other's ideals and plans rather than making layers of power and decision-makers. So, change happened (piecemeal here and there) but did happen.

However, now among the most unbalanced, angriest people that I see in America are middle-class white women. I watch (mostly) silently as young women brush past me with barely controlled fury, cell phones to their ears talking loudly about "what a bitch she is" and that bitch is probably one of their close "friends" who earned the anger by stealing a man or taking center stage away. Yes, as most likely seen on the nearest reality show to you or the nearest front page. Think of the worst of those on the "boob" tube or in your political section-women, right?
The leader of the Tea Party sect is one of the angriest woman I have ever seen. Palin seems to resent everything, everyone. She mocks those who are unlike her by contrasting the reality in front of her with anecdotes on how wholesome and right she and her ilk are in her mind. In many respects, she reminds me of Disney's Cruella De Vil; the obsession with one's own needs and the surprise to be defined as villainous, since the reasoning for bashing immigrants or social programs or skinning puppies is logical to them. Part Cruela, part Aimee Semple McPherson, the early 20th century California religious leader whose use of media led to the rabid devotion of millions to her and others' simplistic preaching. Like McPherson, the troubling personal details that arise cannot rid the idea from any sensible head that Palin is a world-class grifter.

I think their anger comes from lack of balance, lack of humanist ideals and lazy minds. The laziness shows in their inability to articulate the ways that they themselves were able to have any success in this man's world. That's because the answer is from those before them and around them who bother to share knowledge and stories.
I also see the stripper fashion sensibility as visible confusion among women. Absolutely nothing wrong with it on its own, but for those under 30 to see it as a perception of beauty without knowing its defiant early definition was to attract a wide cross section of (mostly fantasy) sexual partners in a transactional setting is troubling. In its pure (?) form, it did represent the fascinating choice to portray sexual dominance in a capitalistic system if you will. So, embrace the full frontal anger of it, but don't identify with it as a passive ideal out of ignorance.
Because if you embrace its style, or a tomboyish exterior, or a androgynous Euro, or a Jackie Kennedy style without knowing its context, I believe all will lose their place in personal politics.

Having said all of that, I am still inspired by the radical and everyday feminists (flaws and all!) who turned their own issues into shared work and change. Some with political actions, some with literary, all with personal. I appreciate them. I don't always agree with them.
I think of:
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Susan B. Anthony
Emma Goldman
Lucy Stone
Eloise
Sojourner Truth
Jane Grant
Josephine Baker
Jane Bowles
Gloria Steinem
Mary Tyler Moore (yes her. She gave my generation a woman we saw weekly who refused to marry or even to explain herself on the subject while she rose in confidence in her life with friends, men and work. Sort of like Early Feminism for Pre-teens. Hard to discount her. Or Patty Hearst for that matter.)
Roxane Dunbar
Abby Rockefeller
Barbra Streisand
Joan Didion
Virginia Woolf
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Josephine Baker
Diana Di Prima
Angela Davis
Lillian Helman
Dorothy Parker
Oprah Winfrey
Fran Liebowitz
Diahann Carroll
May Sarton
Ruby Dee
Hettie Jones
Joni Mitchell
Joyce Johnson
Dolly Parton
Sonja Johnson
Loretta Lynn
Alyce Aust
Serena Williams
Alicia Keys
Marguerite Abela
Karen Silkwood
Karen Nussbaum
Mary J. Blige
Rebecca Solnit
Missy Elliott
June Wiley

The web of those women and thousands or millions more who do not turn away from relating their story or their struggle to the next person who needs to know it is what I see as their success.

What all that means to me is the importance in direct action work of keeping the personal story in your political one, while knowing it can be transforming but also elitist. That elitism was recently pointed out in a talk on movements given at The Hague:
"The fashion for networks and networking as an organizational mode does not in itself create equality, or shared values. It may increase the space for emancipation and dialogue, but it may also obscure inequalities and value clashes."

So, even as it is necessary to relate one's own struggle with the barriers you are working to rid the world, the downside is too many organizations allow bullying, or one small sub-group's issues to be the only ones on the table.
Or, they err on the other side and fear individuals or dynamic personalities thereby keeping uniqueness and points of view from assisting their work.

As with all things, balance is necessary and difficult but women should be able to manage it.
Anger is also necessary, balanced with empathy as it was in the early days of the Second Wave. Again, women should be able to handle it.


In any case, the overall failure of the Second Wave does not mean that it didn't win anything-but what it did win has been steadily reduced by powerful men now joined by powerful women. And some of those women started out on the line out there.
The failure of the big stuff does not dull the fine point of individual power as it was employed and made visible through cheeky direct action by middle-class wives, mothers and sisters way back in the disco days. Does not dull the point--
or maybe I'm being a Pollyanna and the lack of new examples does do exactly that--dull the history. Or maybe it's not the lack of new examples, but the failure to tie any of it to actual change, in perceptions or in laws that govern us that was its failure.

Clearly, in all cases, we activists need to study the history to see who or what might be coming next. Let's hope for Mary Tyler Moore (although we may already have her in the updated, plucky person of Michelle Obama) or please maybe a new Diane Di Prima crossed with Chrissie Hynde and Julia Butterfly Hill.
But let's keep telling our stories.

Living Locally and Globally Part 1

This is to be the first part of a series on living in New Orleans LA, while living in the world at the same time. So many people are asking themselves how the national political picture and the never ending international crisis tableau can be understood--and more importantly--acted on as citizens of the world while somehow living joyfully at the bend of the river.

The first thing to know-I decided in 2005 to fully embrace the anarchistic (defined here as mutual aid, voluntary association, and self-organization) tradition of Proudhon, Thoreau, Murray Bookchin, Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder, Peter Berg and the Diggers by changing my viewpoint on representative democracy. After watching a destruction of another city, this time my own, and seeing the disregard from the Army Corps of Engineers and various levee boards that I had no way to influence or to hold accountable, I decided to make my full stand in direct action work only. Only. Meaning I have to take the incredulous looks from political friends (when they start talking about an election and how important it is) and I say, "I do not vote in representative elections. I do not believe this system works."
Or even from friends who kind of get it, but still think its an "idealistic" view point.

I actually think its the opposite; To abstain from supporting broken systems is a more realistic (and often difficult) first step to work for change than to support that system. And that is the key I think: it's a first step in my process (not voting) rather than the only step (voting maybe once a year) that many others see as their civic duty. To be an anarchist is to stand firmly in the arena that believes in the goodness of individual thought, the power of creative dreams that come from successful partnerships and to expect that you will daily, even hourly start to measure each person you come in contact with to see if there is a shared mutual benefit in knowing each other. My anarchism is not a "negative freedom" as in freedom from, but "freedom to..." as described by Bookchin.
To go directly at a problem, or to learn and later forward that information to others, or to take the time to create an action group that disbands once the work is done (instead of amassing power for power's sake) is heroic to me.
I know there are real issues at stake in Congress or in my own state House. I pay attention. I know that withholding my vote means someone who is contrary to my ideals is more likely to get into office, but I do not believe that my participation should be limited to the beginning of the process. And I also do not believe that a two party system or even a three party system is going to meet my needs as a political activist. Therefore, I choose to work outside of any party or large-scale organization for any length of time.
I also believe that voting is a ball of confusion. The system has been warped beyond all meaning and content. There is no up or down or left or right, just a permanent class of overseers.
I would rather focus my energies on directly influencing individuals in any and all formal offices where decisions are to be made. That influence can range from letter-writing (which I do a great deal of), joining forces with other like-minded citizens on specific issues, working to educate the professional staff of the different levels of government, and of course peaceful protests of many kinds.
Rather than rely on corrupt systems- corrupt as defined as lacking integrity I choose to fashion my own as needed.

What does that mean? Well in this series I am going to try to show some of the successes of direct action, from the ridiculous to the sublime. Systems that allow creative, free people to look at their neighborhood, city or region differently and see possibilities rather than expecting others to know how to solve these issues.
From Whitman:

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

As you will see, I think one of the finest ways to be inspired is to find literary connections: The Transcendentalists are certainly one way, the Beats another, 19th century Marxist thought among, others, Pre-WW 1 activists like Goldman, writers like like Bookchin and Solnit...
I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me (Emerson)

And another way is to know your history. Here's an example of one of my favorite Yippie activities that shows the ridiculous:

Detroit Yippies went to city hall and applied for a permit to blow up the General Motors building in 1970. After the permit was denied, the Yippies said that it just goes to show you can't work within the system to change the system. "This destroys my last hope for legal channels," said Detroit Yippie Jumpin' Jack Flash.





One last thought from Emerson:
Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions.

Part 2:
Successful direct actions from different movements...