yes yes yes, there is a home for this! Earth and Activism and Spirit orbit with Starhawk and the Earth Activist Training Permaculture-Palooza

there is a home for this!
yay yay yay!

those words kept landing with a thud in my stomach throughout the 2 weeks of Earth Activist Training. They landed like comfort, like warm tea on a cold day. Mmmmm, relax, spread out, there's a home for this and you're inside it.

I've had a funny hunch that permaculture is an important lens for me. I've worktraded on permaculture sites, tried (unsuccessfully... so far) to get permaculture classes started, written articles about queer permaculture (more on that some other time). But honestly it was all a hunch - my own experience was my greatest proof that permaculture and real liberatory social justice are one in the same. we can talk about composting our poop into fertile soil one moment and then discuss effective methods of direct action the next? we can talk about dealing with police brutality in the same breath as rainwater harvesting? oh wow oh wow yes!

Starhawk's E.A.T. course, which she taught with Charles Williams, is freaking amazing. As she went over the syllabus each item lodged itself in another nook of my brain, found a fold yearning for exactly that flavor to chew on. There was already space for this knowledge, all i needed was the content to fill in the corners and expand the edges of this now-huge space.

this approach to permaculture constantly examines the human relationships that go down alongside the earth sustainability work. we spent 2 nights talking about non-hierarchical organizing and methods to make a meeting functional fun and effective. we talked about magical activism. baby we even devised some magical activism.

On the activism front, this shit is potent. After so much analysis, heartache and headbreak over Occupy, I came to quite a few conclusions about what makes organizing work. It all aligns with permaculture principles. Observe first.  Value the marginal, the edges, those with less power. Form coalitions that can thrive autonomously, not with constant leadership from outside. I could go on. Permaculture extends these ideas into physical realities. It explains through a lens of natural systems that makes these abstract concepts so much more tenable. Diversity isn't just a cute thing people think theyre supposed to want. it is the core essential necessity of a healthy reality. Blam. If you look at something as if it's a problem, it will stay a problem. if you look at something as if it's information, than it's a solution. Blam.

Also, the intergenerationality of the group was as important as the course content. I have been hungering for relationship with my elders. Here i found many generations interwoven and conscious of how important this fabric is for any future progress. We talked about the struggle to expand the narrowing confines of gender binaries, how to talk about a goddess who is not only a goddess, what earlier feminist movements have to teach youth today and what healing needs to take place. Many new questions, and damn it felt good to sit with people who aren't within 15 years of my age.

Permaculture is as ancient as humanity. This word encapsulates a whole history of people living together with the earth. These past 2 weeks I felt for the first time that I was honoring the ancestors and indigenous peoples of this land in a way that was authentic and active, not guilt-ridden and defeated.

this is the beginning of something.  Spirit and magic can be manifested and harnessed to increase human capacity for love and creativity. this is no joke, no subtle thing. This is the power ritual holds for the transformation of life. I'm telling ya. I've held such a distance between myself and spirituality for so long, the vestiges of scientific conditioning clinging to me and hissing "that doesn't make sense!". But here i found that the things that inspire me about science can be the wellspring from which my spirituality gushes - i can marvel at cells and water and star dust and pound the earth in ecstatic frothing. Woopee!

O.U.R.Ecovillage: Kids Camp!

I got a call Saturday night, 9pm, 2 weeks ago.

Brandy said "the person who was supposed to be running kids camp on monday cant anymore. If you still want to do work-trade for the E.A.T. course, can you come out? tomorrow?"

GUH.

I ran home, hyperventilating and sweating. I had applied months earlier to do work trade at OUR Ecovillage for the  EAT Course. EAT = Earth Activist Training, and it is the Permaculture Design Certificate course that Starhawk started and teachers. Why was i so rabid for this course? instead of re-capturing how i had been feeling, heres the blurb i sent my new permaculture friend Nicole in the UK describing my desires (sent months ago) :

"I am hungry for all permaculture skills (I have a lot of experience with
natural building, composting toilets, and rainwater catchment systems,
less experience with gardening), but what I'm looking for specifically is
a permaculture practice that places social justice at the center of the
work. I am very interested in permaculture as a lens on liberation. I am a
queer, feminist, anti-racist and anti-capitalist individual, and all of
these things are very tied in to permaculture for me. I believe that
permaculture has the ability to transform how people organize, how we
create self-sufficient alternatives to dominant structures, how we achieve
liberation of oppressed people, and how we shift activism from an
"anti-domination" stance to a "pro-liberation" stance. To me the
domination of women, of queers, of people of color, and of the earth are
all part of the same nasty mindset. I am most interested in projects that
have strong racial, gender, and economic diversity. I'm super excited
about learning from women and transfolk."

So basically i was searching for permaculture that had social justice at its core. i searched and searched, but was having a surprisingly hard time actually finding groups that were doing this work. lots of people sprinkle it on top, but really focusing on social permaculture? it was often an afterthought.

Starhawk is one of the founders of Eco-Feminism and modern Paganism; she is a huge social justice activist and one of the most important nonviolence advocates, particularly during the anti-nuclear movement of the 90s.nAnd I didn't know this at the time, but she's also super involved with, basically, organizational theory. How groups of people work. What sort of organizing is empowering, inspires action. What meetings make us sing and what meetings make us glaze over. How to achieve non-hierarchy, easier said than done. And ths is basically all of the stuff i think about all the damn time (thus, this blog.) Social Permaculture. give it to me.

ok ok ok ok ok okok okokokokokokokokok,
there needs to be more conversation about this class, which actually started a week ago. Spirituality, building, solutions, direction, acceptance, expansiveness, ritual, forgiveness, coalescence, magic, challenge, etc etc all come to mind. seriously folks, this shit is poppin off and we gotta chat. but for now, let's get back to that phone call.

Basically, it was ridiculous and meant taking a plane, but i couldn't turn away from this. i had been holding this in my heart for months. i found out a had a bunch of miles that would expire unless i used them, and on monday morning i was on a 6am plan bound for Victoria, BC, Canada. Tuesday morning, Kids Camp! began!

and it was great. no one involved knew they would be earlier than the thursday before it started (thats 4 days). there were 16 kids, ages 5-10. 3 counselors. Us counselors joked often about how crazy it all was - all thrown into it, no schedule, everything and i mean just about everything off the cuff. but the kids were so creative and amazing, kind and ready to learn. and this place, this place. this place is an endless well of fun stuff to do, cause guess what, that's what happens when communities come together and decide to do stuff. this ecovillage is full of projects, from farm work and animal care to building with mud and clay and making your own butter and wandering in the woods. we actually pulled it off because the community held space for the kids, because us counselors were badass at checking in about each others needs and boundaries, and because this sort of place is ripe with spaces to learn. oh, and mostly cause the kids were amazing. if anything our realization that it was actually chaotic was the most negative part of kids camp, cause the actual days went very well.

it's a funny thing. Brandy, the director of OUR Ecovillage, kind of irresponsibly dumped a huge load on 3 unknowing people, assuming theyd figure it out. And we grumbled that it was irresponsible, but you know what? She was right. We figured it out. And it was great. Learning can be funny.

WHATS BeeN GOinG On?!?! 1st: Grandma Turned 90

My grandmama turned 90 a couple of weeks ago. Me, my mama, her two sisters and everybody's respective kids and partners gathered in western mass. to celebrate. and wow.

my grandma was always extremely strong, direct. encouraging. with her dementia she has softened; she is kinder than ever, constantly grateful, always smiling, shaking her head and saying things like "i cant believe it" or "youre gorgeous." it's like all of the love juice that has always been a part of her actions is now bubbling to the surface, being articulated in the only words she thinks worthwhile saying. what used to be what she did but never said, now she says. she says love.

i realized that this wasnt new (i used to think that her dementia was bringing on this new uber-loving thing) when i saw all of her children gather for her birthday. her children are all, first and foremost, incredible mothers. the three sisters are strong, deep, giving, unbelievable mothers. they are fierce. they support eachother. the incredible mothering that my grandma provided has extended itself and thus increased exponentially, as the next generation has taken her love in, digested it through each personal lens, and spread it onto their own families.

at the birthday i saw the magical transmutation of love and skillful mothering through the generations. it doesnt stop. it is steady fire. the more you give it, the more it grows. this is a clan, there are secrets to these skills; not discrete things you can write down, but ways, intentions, care.


all hail grandmothers.

Asheville, NC: Who's laughing?

Undocumented, underpaid, migrant labor was used to make this mouthwatering corn-fritter, not the henna-ed hands of that white guy with dreads at the farmers' market? What a zinger!!! Photo credit: Ashevile Travel Blog

stream of consciousness poem:

Being in Asheville is so...
beautiful
confusing
money
organic
white
lies
normal
bubble
disappointed
obvious
vegan
gluten-free
accessible
priviledge
everywhere
pseudo-liberal hippies
confusion
what's real?
whole grains
farms
work-trade
secret possibilities
hidden currents
normal abnormal
cool different
real different?
mountains
sunsets
clouds
dramatic
jokes cause we're uncomfortable
jokes cause we have to
running up mountains
running down mountains
yoga
cultural appropriNation
duh
is it funny?


I've been around a lot of jokes about the lack of people of color and the general homogeneity of whiteness here in Asheville, NC. It's an effort to make it funny, to acknowledge it, to let people know that you notice, to make you feel better about it cause you're in on how fucked up it is so you can't be a perpetrator of racism. I'm not sure it's very funny. It's good to acknowledge it, better than to pretend it's neutral or absent. But I can't help feeling that this is a handy little tool to make folks feel better about it instead of getting mad about it. Instead of asking hard questions about why that is; instead of doing something about it.


The people who I'm thinking of have excused racist behavior as "just a part of things." which, yea, is obviously true, but the whole point of bringing up how things are racist is to change the fact that they are a part of things, not to prove that alien's must be temporarily inhabiting the flesh of these usually-normal-but-suddenly-extraterrestrially-racist people. These jokes come from people who say things like "all people have a responsibility to know what compost is," clearly assuming middle-class, mildly-liberally-educated, and most likely white people. These are, I assure you, not bad people. They are just isolated in a white-dominated culture that teaches people how to think critically about earth practices but not how to think critically about modern race in the U.S.

These jokes come from me too, so what's that? Comedy can play a huge role in getting folks to talk about what they don't want to talk about. With all of the controversy around Daniel Tosh's fiercely defended rape jokes, it's clear that there's a real re-evaluation of the role of comedy needed in this country. Comedians have long held an important role in airing out dirty laundry, getting a nation to see what it wants to ignore. But it can also reify bullshit. So if I respond to someone's comment about a black person with "What? a black person in Asheville?" what does that do? My intention is to show how ridiculously homogenous it is here. The snarl of my lip is there because this upsets me. But am I actually just doing what white people have done for ages and ages - made jokes at the expense of people of color? normalize racism?

well shit. I'm going to have to think about this.

Some bitty thoughts on Resisting Racism: Queer Liberation is Collective Liberation Workshop

Jenna and Damien (facilitators of the workshop) and Ian (Provdience-based queer organizer and artist extraordinary) celebrating the warm feeling of "woah, we talked about some heavy shit" after the workshop.

Traveling organizers!
what a thought!
what a dream!

Last weekend Jenna Peters-Golden and Damien Luxe blew in to town for a weekend of doing. The two bad-asses facilitated a refreshingly (not being sarcastic! truthfully!) 4 hour long workshop about how racism manifests itself and what queer liberation has to do with all forms of liberation.
It was refreshing cause it didn't have to end as soon as we got started.
15 people came, which is wildly wonderful considering the time commitment. It speaks to the hunger of people to connect the queer movement to broader struggle.

We almost had enough time to and enough detail to get really specific with our dreams. One exercise had use imagine the collaboration of two historical activist groups who never actually had anything to so with each other. I was in the group combining the American Indian Movement and the Boston Women's Movement. This was surprisingly fruitful, but so rushed that we couldn't get very creative and I felt anxious the whole time about getting a chance to speak or about one person talking the whole time. So, note to all facilitators: give lots of time to the creative side of things! I felt like most time was spent on clever tricks for understanding racism, taught by the folks in the front of the room to the folks in the back of the room. Because it was an audience of activists, I think more time could have been spent sharing our own opinions and experiences, and spent on building alternatives. Remember y'all, i'm in a hyper-action-ey mood lately, so i guess take this criticism with a grain of salt. or don't.

There were almost only white people in attendance, which we didn't mention, but I just mentioned, so there. Is there a growing attempt on the part of white activists to get real about their anti-racist work? Is this just guilt? Is this just a tiny subsect of people who were already convinced that there's such a thing as modern racism? Where is this coming from and where is it going to?
My hope is that more folks are waking up to the pervasiveness of racism in the United States, that more folks want to figuring out how they can DO something about it versus comment on it often, that folks are increasingly seeing how racism operates at every level of society and identity.

What is the conversation around race in organizations and communities that you are a part of? What are the actions people are taking? 

I'm particularly interested in groups that aren't explicitly anti-racist, such as feminist groups and queer groups - are y'all organizing around race?

Fuck This; or how I feel on Youtube; Or Sexism is more than a Feeling

This was set off by a conversation with my father. He was complaining that he'd heard all about this "war on women" thing, but couldn't see how women's rights are being particularly eroded right now, why there's a war on women specifically at this moment in time.

I answered that it's harder to get an abortion now than it was ten years ago. That one in six women get raped. That women still get paid an average of 77 cents to a man's dollar, less if you're a woman of color. All these arguments seemed to fall flat on him - those were issues of access, of economics, not gender. Those were long-standing issues that have gotten better, not worse. None of those things are rights that the national government has impeded.

I realized that I need more facts in my toolbelt. I need numbers, ratios, trends, graphs that help break down the invisible oppression that mediates most women's lives, killing them, raping them, preventing them from realizing their dreams, keeping them from health, love, and intimacy. Ok.

 I will begin compiling my own and create a post with the most poignant information (i'll cite whoever sent me the info), so we can all use this in our toolbelt of education. Please send your factoids (cited if possible) my way.

 Re-post this or respond, and we'll make a great resource for everyone!

In the meantime, here are some interesting youtube trends I've noticed. I was really excited to find Anita Sarkeesian's series, Tropes vs. Women. Get's into some of the nifty bullshit I'm almost entirely used to. So I get all excited and then start clicking on links that pop up on the page - featured videos, etc. At first I'm thinking - wow, Tropes vs. Women is so smart, so well produced, and it has so many views! Until I noticed how many views these other videos were getting.
Note how youtube works: you see an opening image, a title, and the number of views. With that in mind, check out these popular videos and imagine what sort of culture results in these numbers.

#4 The Evil Demon Seductress (Tropes vs. Women) : 95,978 views

#1 The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (Tropes vs. Women) : 145,746 views

Anti Feminist : 326,101 views

Mumbai Girl Forced in Jungle : 740,762 views

 

Photos from Hot Pink Mass! Queer Cabaret + Femmes Fight Back Community Installation

 Providence. Wow. You turned it out.

Damien Dealing With Dudes

J.R. Uretsky being amazing

 

Jess Chen and Noel'le Longhaul did some gorgeous spoken word situations

Alexis Drutchas laying it dooowwwwn

Femmes Fight Back! Installation

self-story: It Didn't Wait, and Why Should It?

These days are so long I could drink a beer now and sober up with the sun still reminding me I'm metabolizing. 
That backpack has held so much.
It's crazy.

I asked for two cups, one with ice and one without. I waited a few minutes, then switched the ice from one to the other and poured my beer into the cold empty glass. This made me feel clever, effective, and secretively excellent.

Earlier I sat by a river that's been chewed out from below, tugged across itself more than once to fit different money's meanings and now it's pretty and where it is and there's a weeping willow behind enough grass that the willow looks like maybe it's dangerous.
I sat there and read, remembering only between chapters and at slow parts that I'm alive and that means I don't know anything.
A soft bending cord which was also a branch brushed my face, so I stopped reading but not because I remembered but because I am and that's very different.
On the leaf I held between fingers loosened suddenly from pages it took me seconds to realize that the tiny beatle was giving birth.
You know, birth in a patient way, the way egg-laying creatures can squeeze and push all for a life that right now is smooth, featureless, unrecognizable as "next" but might be next one day.
When maybe isn't maybe worth it, it's definitely everything.

I debated for 5 egg-lays if I should take a picture. I was confused because I had immediately wanted to do this; then when I decided that it was hollow and modern and therefore bad I had wanted to write about the egg-laying instead; then I decided that it was fucked up that all I could do while watching the violent honesty of egg-laying was to try to stop wanting to capture it and make it mine forever.

The tiny beetle made me sad. I was reading about love and women and mothers and jealousy and murder and broken-hearts and the foreverness of certain types of sad. That beetle worked. It would barely finish one impossibly long yellow egg before its butt found a new dot of leaf to establish sticky contact with and place the next maybe life just-exactly-so. Its diligence made me sad, like here this beetle was, giving its whole life simply to its task of maintaining eternity, and it didn't hate itself or its pregnancy or its decisions. I wanted to call it love. And this one thing that loved simply was going to walk away soon; the distance would be huge. There's a sweaty palmed closeness in our human families and so my heart broke wondering if the only way to hurt was to stay and the only way to love was to leave.


Now I feel safe and a little drunk at a table far from things too dangerously simple they might break my heart. It doesn't look like it to the other people here, but this is all I have. I can see my bike out the window and there is the bag for clothes, there is the bag for books. It's a funny feeling, to sit down next to a stranger at a cafe and let them see everything; the whole house piled against the table legs, the water botter is also the cup and the scarf is also the blanket. Maybe my sadness back at the tree came because of its easy potential for home; that could be it, my water bottle resting just so in the roots and everything already there so why do I keep leaving?


I bought a beer so I could make it make sense. This public life means that dropping 3 bucks makes me feel normal. Yeah, I'm a customer; I'm not sitting here for hours because it's inside and quiet and almost like a private sort of space and cause there is no other private space for me to go, this is as close as it gets. I wonder if the bags give me away, but I'm white and young and have a camera and they didn't even card me cause they already trusted me.


Back when I was at the willow I took out my camera, and by the time the lens had focused the tiny beetle had crawled completely out of the frame.

everything that existed at the moment of writing this.

Detroit: Yeah, But... and why I'm so tired

Two other people were also couchsurfing at the Goldengate Restoration Project. They were around my age, early twenties, lived in DC. And I can't stop thinking about what one of them said the first night we met.

 

I asked her what she thought about the AMC (she hadn't been yet) and she responded "The AMC is cool, but it's problematic."
Not Detroit enough.
Only a certain kind of person comes.


And it made my heart sink. Like sink. Suddenly I was barely breathing to stave off the collapse. I wanted to cry but my face was so moist from humidity that it felt superfluous.




Will it ever be enough? Everything is too narrow, too broad, too radical, too reformist. I don't want to discount these problems, in fact I want to live inside them, every damn day. But shit. When do we get to sink deep into our trying; sigh and say "we're doing our best" and not mean it as a cop-out? Cause let's be real - that's all we've ever been doing and if we can't celebrate it right now then when the hell do we get to celebrate at all?

Yea yea yea we're always pushing, but that isn't the same thing as not being there yet.

Detroit: Squatting like it ain't no thang

I showed up at the spot I would be couchsurfing at for the rest of the AMC.
It was already dark and it was far out there. I didn't know anything about where I was going, except for that a few Detroiters said various "mmmmmm..." sounds when I told them where I was staying. Driving up (thanks person who so kindly gave me a ride so I wouldn't have to wait 2 hours for a bus!) we passed one and another and again burned out houses. I had already google-mapped the spot, so I knew what to expect. Right?

 

 Turns out my couchsurfing host lived in a community of 9 (NINE!) squatted houses and lots, all on the same block of Detroit. Say whhhaaaaa? Like it ain't no thang. Most of these houses were off-grid. Ok, lots of squats are off-grid cause they haven't gotten the electric company to turn their juice on. But in this case they were taking the opportunity to install rainwater catchment systems and build cobb ovens. Yeah, there were chickens. And that sad looking house I'd seen on googlemaps? 

It's been transformed into a free bike shop for kids called Red Planet Bikes. Running on the regular, teaching workshops and giving away tons of bikes. For freez.

 

That night I fell asleep in the attic of the first unlocked city house I've stayed in in years. 

And that was what hit me the hardest about this space - people were out on the stoops, in the street, constantly talking and sharing food, ideas, lighters. The street was poppin, and this in the middle of blocks of burned-out depression. 

The amazingly sparkly room I stayed in

I have hesitations with squatting - who's doing it? Isn't there already a word for middle class white people moving into a community of color without adding economically to the people who already live there - gentrification? (total disclosure - i didn't think of that zinger, it was read somewhere else on the ethersphere). But there seemed to be real community involvement, many of the people involved had lived around there all their lives. I wasn't there for long enough to really understand the complicated dynamics that usually go along with squatting, but I know that the block felt really welcoming. 

They used glass bottle and cobb walls to fix burnt out city walls! Notice the light coming in through the bottles.

The history of the place is even more wacky.  The ecovillage got started as a part of Tumbleweed University, which is now wrapped up in the Goldengate Restoration Project. Basically, Occupy Detroit took all that momentum and all that heady theory and did what so many occupations talked about - squatted the hell out of foreclosed houses. So now this is also the Occupy Detroit epi-center.

Making a front yard garden in some serious sun

 Interestingly, almost no one around here knew what the Allied Media Conference was. I suppose Detroit ain't tiny, but still, with folks coming from around the world, you'd think they'd manage to take a trip around town and see if anyone who doesn't happen to work for a not-for-profit might be interest.

This place was such a delicious balm from the incessant concept crazy of the AMC that I was choking on. I do think that I'm actually over-reacting to the AMC and it was way more skills based than most conferences, but my own experience was surprisingly frustrating. Point is, here I was on accident, just looking for a couch to stay on, and I tumbled into the welcoming lab of a block of squatting community building self-sufficient DO-ers.

Maybe all I want to do is hang out with plants. 

Oh Em Gee Keep Queering! Keep Fighting!

can't wait to wrap my brain around this weekend's events after the fact, 

but before the fact = you can still come!

Poster by Olivia

Allied Media Conference Thoughts: Pragmatism, Buzzwords and Metaphor

note: this advice and rant is so deeply happening because, of all people, i live in abstract theory land and this is my struggle on the regular. i've noticed that my advice is generally stuff i'm trying to believe in myself.





Skills vs. Discussions. Workshops need to be labelled clearly skillshare, discussion, lecture, or performance. Have you ever gone to a workshop expecting some skills and it turns out everyone's sitting in circles theorizing about what the word "skill" means? Point is I have learned something important about myself at the Allied Media Conference.

I have no patience for metaphor.

I have no patience for theory. 

I want to learn what you tried yesterday, how it went, and what you are going to try today.

Display from the Maine-based Beehive Collective

The AMC is a conference full of Radical Activists (note the capitals). A lot of these folks know the language and the grammars of this community. I swear if I hear another buzzzz word.... liberation. oppression. I don't even know what liberation means! I don't even know what oppression means! Don't just drop that as though you're saying something when in fact you're saying everything/nothing!






Mind you I drop that shit like an exhale. I'm all "feminism"-this and "liberatory community practices"-that. Cause I'll admit it - it's useful. I need these words so I don't have to talk all day just to explain the first sentence I said when I woke up in the morning. But nah, nah, nah, ENOUGH.






Being in the high-density-buzz-world of the AMC has convinced me that this language is dangerous. We can talk in circles all day about the word accountability, but if I still have no idea what tactic you tried out last time there was an assault in your community, if I have no idea what that conversation looked like and what steps were taken, then what have I learned?
I've learned that a lot of people think accountability is important.
Cool. Check. 




Of course education is extremely important, but let's be conscious of our audiences and our opportunities to move into action-mode. DOING is more important than theoretically-doing-but-it's-cool-cause-I-have-a-list-of-references-I-can-google-later.







Have our brains been so academicized, so made to privilege intellect, that that is the inherent mode in which we operate? We slip unblinkingly into analysis, criticism. & yes, that is essential. But at a certain point it rings hollow. What are we talking about? Are we too afraid of making mistakes? of being remembered negatively? of speaking for others? So we stick to abstraction. Better that than allow the vulnerability of giving a single detail. Our vocabularies are so bulked up, our brains so used to filling out multiple choice surveys, that all description,  all experience, all detail have fallen to the wayside. I think it also has to do with not trusting that our experiences are truly worthwhile and relevant.




This happened so much in femsex. Big ideas, suggesting at experiences, got traded around like abstract playing cards. We sat inside a flurry of hints forming clouds of people that I maybe knew something about. It took months and one much-needed conversation about masturbation to put some spine into our concept clouds. Some intimacy. Yes darling, imagine for a moment that you're truly around friends. Tell them what happened. They'll try to understand. You don't have to convince the room that your head is in the right place or that you read the right zine.


Pragmatism. I'm taking about what makes us do things.
How we spend our minute of our days is not besides the point. Are you trying to guess at how best to change the world? Or are you trying shit out on the daily to see what sticks?

Detroit Day 3, AMC Day 2. Or was it 1.5?

Have you ever been to a conference? 

 What were your first thought when you arrived?

How did you stay grounded?

Reflections from Day 2 in Detroit: Parkour is Possible, Couchsurfing Rulez, AMC = AMCrazy

Day 2 in Detroit.

Again, I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed by the sheer newness of this all. I arrived at the AMC to get my name tag and everyone there looked like someone I'd like to meet, organize, or make out with. Generally they were triple threats.

So of course I ran away, and now I'm in a cafe a couple of blocks away, drinking (overpriced) coffee and dog-earring every single page of the AMC Program Guide. Should I pick one track and stick with it, doing deep with a few key ideas ? Should I take some of everything, pushing myself to try some things that don't even look any good?

But reeeeeewiiiiiind, last night I couch surfed for the first time! Let's talk about that, that feels more stable than the rest of the unknowns of my life. Wow, couch surfing is the most stable thing in my life right now. Interesting.

So, last night my awesome couch surfing host Kris brought me to hang out with her friends in Ann Arbor. We stopped along the way to do some parkour. That's right! We were having a conversations in which I was mourning how on the one hand parkour is crazy cool because it reclaims space, but on the other hand it is so competitive and exclusive because it's all about badass tricks. Kris was like "Nahuh! Everyone starts off small! You only see the very best on youtube, but everyone started vaulting over low walls." So we did. At the first gas station we passed. I even scraped my knee!




When we had been sufficiently pummeled by the concrete we got back in the car and she lay the rest of her philosophy on me. My hang-ups about park our, she said, are exactly what keeps most people from trying new things. People don't want to try karate cause they're not already black belts. They won't touch snowboard cause they might fall. Kris had snowboarded about 3 times when she decided to go snowboarding at the fancy Italian slope in the Alps. Did she notice that everyone else was wealthy as hell and had grown up with all the fancy ski lessons one could buy? Sure, but she didn't care. She was there and she wasn't going to let anything sep her from getting hers.




In her opinion, exclusivity exists only in your mind, not in institutions themselves. I disagree on some levels - I don't think that the onus of inclusivity should fall solely on less privileged/experienced/fit people. But her outlook is a very inspiring and useful personal philosophy that I'm going to return to again and again. Who's fancy hors d'oeuvres at a black tie event we weren't invited to? OUR fancy hors d'oeuvres at a black tie event we weren't invited to!







Last thoughts -  the family in Ann Arbor we were visiting - really big, really bonded, really loving, really involved with cool social justice projects, real conscious of privilege, really Christian. These things are all connected. The community they had, their values and their drive all grew from their religious structures, more or less. I'm confused. Can we create this without god?

my first (of probably many)  Parkour injury

for more pics of detroit, visit my flickr
more conversation about the AMC to come. that shit was cray.

Detroit! + some tips for cheap travel

Welcome to Detroit!

i say to myself.

I've stepped off the bus for the last time (until next Monday) - no more connections to catch, 20-minute stretch breaks to squander. The brutally hot and broad boulevard is home now, unless I can find a spot better suited for survival. For thinking.

This headfirst tumble into the east/middle of the U.S. was obvious, thoughtless when all I had to compute was where and when the next bus was coming in and how to secure a window seat. But walking wordlessly away from the bus's hissing hydraulics, I can't help but notice that I have no idea what I'm doing. The 30 or so strangers on the bus with whom I barely exchanged glances now feel like a veritable community compared to how new all these people on the street look. Ok. Here I am. Whew.

I am in Detroit, MI for the 4-day long, widely-loved Allied Media Conference. The conference brings together artists, organizers, educators, techies, and media folks of various stripes to talk about how all these tools can make things, in a word, better. Several activist friends of mine have referred to the conference as "dreamy." Apparently it's so full of passionate people and actual movement-building that it'll make ya pinch yourself to see if you'll wake up. I've never gone before. I'm not even sure where I fit in to all this (am I an artist? an educator? Ahhhhh who am I?!?!? ok crisis over) but I'm volunteering for registration and documentation and I'm super pumped.

But all that's gonna come later. Right now I'm in Detroit a day early to "get a feel for the city" and I have no idea what's going on.
Ah yes, that sweet chaos-feeling.
I love travel.

Cafe Cass

Here are some of the ways I'm make this trip affordable, for all you would-be conference goers who can't swing fancy trips every time some activists decide to hang out:

1. Volunteering for the conference

You can find ways to volunteer or work trade for almost every conference, gathering, or festival. I volunteer for lots of reasons, only one is the free-ness. The biggest reason is that it gives me a chance to participate in the making of these things. It's far easier for me to make new, real connections when I am working side by side with people; I get lots of appreciation from everyone attending; and I don't get lost at sea in the craziness that is a large gathering. Sometimes I also get a free t-shirt and maybe even a soda.

1. Couchsurfing

I actually haven't couch surfed before this, but it was super super easy. Couch surfing is a free website where you can find places to stay, people to hang out with, and stuff to do all over the world. The most amazing thing about this to me is the community. When you're a couch surfer, it's like you're in on this crazy secret (hey! you can stay anywhere in the world for free! and with people who will take you out for a beer and introduce you to their friends!) and you're in the family immediately. 

1. Packing food ahead

This might seem nuts, but I went to the grocery store before leaving Providence and I bought enough snacks (nuts, dried fruit, hard cheese, some fruit) to pretty much last me the weekend. It's really not that big of a hassle, and now I don't have to watch my hard-earned singles disappear into the hands of every over-priced food truck trying to tempt me.

1. Megabus

Megabus goes all over the place (not literally) now. I had to separately get 3 trips to get to Detroit from Providence, but all in all it took the less time than one single Greyhound  bus doing the same trip. So even if it looks like there's no direct line, see if you can get some connecting ones. If you get tickets early it can be ridiculously cheap, and if you miss your bus you can get on the next one for an extra $5. You can also get creative with paying, but if you want to talk about that let's chat later.

delayed post: The Free Yard Sale!

I got rid of almost all of my stuff last weekend. Stuff and more stuff. No home = no storage, and there's only so much a pack can expand.  I was also taking care of two ex-roommates boxes of old unwanted clothes. There must have been at least 70 items of clothing, no joke.

So I organized a yard sale, hoping some community time and maybe even some dollars could be a part of the stuff-destruction. I made signs, a Facebook event, I even made a shit-ton of lemonade.
Thinking I'd catch lots of foot traffic, I set up all the clothes on hangers hung on the chain link fence next to the India Point Park Pedestrian Footbridge. And. The. Day. Wore. On.






I couldn't take it. I sold maybe 6 items in 5 hours. Made maybe 12 bucks. When it came time to pack up, i knew I couldn't emotionally handle another day of this. At least logistically I didn't want to deal with it. First thought was to bring everything to Salvation Army, but I ruled that out. I didn't want anyone to have to pay for it, and hasn't SA been accused of all sorts of mismanagement of dollars?
Then my friend Pau has the brilliant idea to do just DO what i wanted to do: leave all the stuff there, give it away for free. YAY!

One big "Free!" sign later, people were already starting to gather and buzz. In ten minutes I made as much money as I had made the whole day, just from folks wanting to knock me down a buck for the 7 dresses they picked up. I simply walked away from the whole thing, promising to come back the next day and clean up the debris.

This, my friends, is literally all that was left:

All hangers: empty. All knickknacks: disappeared. It literally looked like someone had decided to clean up for me.

And then the real joy! The stories! I kept running into friends who had randomly walked by the Free Sale. They had my friend's homespun yard, my mom's boyfriend's mama's wool sweater. They told me about the gaggle of people teeming around boxes, picking things up and exclaiming "Is this stuff really free?" 

My friend Jamie told me a ridiculously heart-warming story about 2 little girls who were there with their father. They kept picking things up and asking, shyly, if they could take it. "Yes, it's all free." was the response, and the girl's eyes would widen with surprise and joy. They didn't need to worry about the burden it was on their father, whether they had earned it. Jamie said she could see these little girls grappling with the possibility of stuff being for free; stuff that yours just cause; the possibility of people sharing for no reason beyond the desire to share.


So there you have it folks: free stuff makes you more money (if it's also donation-able), more community, and brings out the best in us.

Seriously, next time you have a yard sale, make it free!

Bus to Detroit Reading: As a Weapon In the Hands of the Restless Poor

Sunset on the first of three buses to Detroit: 3 hours down, 15 hours to go

"Numerous forces—hunger, isolation, illness, landlords, police, abuse, neighbors, drugs, criminals, and racism, among many others—exert themselves on the poor at all times and enclose them, making up a “surround of force” from which, it seems, they cannot escape. I had come to understand that this was what kept the poor from being political and that the absence of politics in their lives was what kept them poor. I don’t mean “political” in the sense of voting in an election but in the way Thucydides used the word: to mean activity with other people at every level, from the family to the neighborhood to the broader community to the city-state."


This is a quote from an article sent to me by the ever-learning Sam Tarakajian in Harper's article "II. As a Weapon in the Hands of the Restless Poor." by Earl Shorris

I'm thinking about this definition of "political." Does the commonly understood bounds of the "political" mean that all emphasis is put on raising engagement with voting booths? could an expansion of our understanding of where the political takes place = an expansion of civic engagement? work with people where they are, in the many arenas in which life takes place, instead of this already-too-abstract-and-precious sport called electoral politics? 

I'm also finding it breathtaking how unflinchingly Shorris claims a direct link between poverty and political (all sorts of political) alienation. Don't know why, it's just hitting me hard to see it stated almost like a math equation. 

Also also, this casts a whole new light on the feminist project to reclaim the "personal" as "political."

Every space in which humans interact is a political space. Every moment we think or act we are inventing society, inventing political climates.  In lieu of this article, the lines are drawn ever more clearly: gender liberation IS class liberation. The sort of arguments that have kept women from playing economic ball are deeply linked to the behavior that keep all poor people poor. Discounting everyday life. Waiting and trusting and believing only in electoral politics. Denying the possibility of a politics that involves those not already privileged enough to have a seat on the ballot. 

Noooooooooow, as for other thoughts on this article... complicated. The article is mostly about an experimental class program where people in poverty took a rigorous course in philosophy, the idea being that learning about how to think, how to reflect, is the real first step out of poverty. Let's just say I have a problem with the curriculum. And the analysis. A curriculum based solely on and taught solely by wealthy white men? Yeah, that has defined culture for a long time, but only in the eyes of the elite. They missed out an a great opportunity to expand past this reverence of the same power structures that have confined societal thinking for so long. To connect with the roots of the people IN in the class, not continue demanding that everyone lay aside their histories and learn that value and knowledge is something that somebody else, somebody with money and skin privilege, gets to make up. 


Also, I think there was a major flaw in the conclusion of the experiment. There seems to be a lot of back-patting at the end - this many students are attending college, that many students are employed. But was that just due to the thinking ability these folks gained in philosophy class? Could it be the connections they formed to people in the system (most students ended up attending Bard, the college that partly sponsored the program)? Could it be that they were treated as scholars, as worthwhile, as more than society's burden? Could it be that what this class did was simply not treat them as poor and give them the same inside loopholes that folks already attending college prep schools automatically have? I think that the author needs to do a bit of a privilege analysis on the things beyond the textbook that happen for most kids who don't live in poverty. I think this experiment was still a total success, cause it does seem like the participants are doing well, but the factors of success need to be reconsidered.


 But I will let y'all read for yourself and maybe we can talk about it more on this here blog. The last sentence sent chills all through my body though, so try and make it to the end.