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.

Queer Pride! Insurgent queer fabulosity shouts out from Providence's Gay Pride Parade, 6/17

This month was Pride Month! Rhode Island has its very own massive Pride Parade, which is one of the best days of the year to be downtown. Everyone is excited to see you. Are we in this together? Not even a question.

BUT

(and not queer buttz)

As is the case in most cities I've been to, the LGBTQ scene is dominated by LGB folks and is increasingly corporate. The scene almost always takes place in bars, i.e. youth-free zones dedicated primarily to mating and alcohol. Pride Parades the world over are being sponsors by corporations responsible for the nasty capitalism that leaves so many queers and tradespeople in the streets. Has Pride lost its radical roots?

Nahuh. Cause the radical queers are coming! As a part of Queer Lil Rhody's month 'o' fun, an insurgent (non-permit-paying) queer faction joined the festivities at pride. This culminated in a crazy fun youth-organized, corporate-music-less by-donation partay. I don't feel like the insurgency was aggressive as much as it was instructive. Many folks seemed overwhelmingly pumped to see us, cause after all, marriage licenses aside, this shit is revolutionary. 

Parade Prep Party!

Parade Time!

Find out more about CeCe Mcdonald,
the target of racist transphobic attacks being incarnated for self-defense
http://supportcece.wordpress.com/

Oh dang, these folks made me cry. Youth Pride Rhode Island was fierce beyond reason!

Here's the poster from the Queer Dance Party that rocked the end of the night! 

and had very nice cake!

poster by Meg Powers

Great amazingness everyone! 

I really don't even know much more than that it was crazy fun, and having fun is half the battle.

Unite? and Fight!

I wasn't comfortable, necessarily.

Poster by Jenine Bressner

Not the way I usually am in these sorts of things: all fired up, all action-planning, all here-we-are-and-aint-it-cool-that-we-have-the-answers. I found my breath often held, slightly, partially engaged and partially waiting to see what would happen next. 

Last Thursday the Rhode Island Anti-Sexism League and Queer Lil Rhody hosted Unite & Fight! A Forum on Queer Liberation and Feminism at Libertalia Autonomous Space. This panel was a part of Queer Lil Rhody's month of radical queer events, a massively awesome fest of queerness that has rocked Providence's lil June socks off. There's been a youth-organized dance party, a political poster-making workshop, 8 films, a farm day, and so much more that I've given up listing each thing. Basically the queer community in Providence is popping and it's extremely delicious.

So back to that circle of folks sitting together and talking about how, why, when, and what is up with the union of queer liberation and feminism. So many important concepts were brought to light, but I want to focus on that slight discomfort that crept in to this seemingly obvious discussion. Turns out, uniting is more complicated than a hand shake and an agreement that gender oppression sucks. The discomfort I am speaking of came from the very raw realization that many people in the room did not in fact share the same politics, or the same priorities, or the same reasons for being there. This is true for any group of people hanging out, but often in activist circles we cling to our categories of oppression and hope that broad titles; "feminism," "queer liberation," etc; will keep us all convinced that we are in the same boat. 

How do we organize people whose priorities often fail to coincide, in fact sometimes contradict? One participant, who was queer-identified and male-bodied*, shared his first-time activism story: his mother was an anti-choice activist and he too became involved. He said that many of his beliefs had not changed since then, but he still wanted to stand in solidarity with women. He said this to a room scattered with some of the fiercest pro-choice activists I know. Did I cringe? Of course. But instead of jumping down his throat, the response was one of gratefulness. Grateful, because he went out on a limb to share his beliefs to a room full of those who fight that very belief. Grateful, because he broke the ice in a conversation that for a large part assumed we all already agreed. Grateful, because now we could get real about the challenges we face in movement-building in the real world. This might be one of the biggest ideological chasms I've seen accepted, openly, in a room brimming with political passion.

I have been reading the classic collection of essays, This Bridge Called My Back. These essays were written by radical women of color in the late '70s, and the collection addresses head-on the issue of assumed unity in a movement that in fact contains many differences. White, middle-class women's priorities are not all women's priorities. Experiences get excluded and oppression reiterated when we refuse to acknowledge these differences. It is essential that we stand alongside each other in struggle, but to claim unity numbs us to the complexity of our struggles. This assumed unity damned the women's movement of the 60's and 70's to a limited, elitist and fundamentally racist shell of what it could have been. 

This book helped me freak out with happy when tensions arose in the room last Thursday. There we were, feeling in real-time what it means to hold differences side by side without shying away. The discomfort of a situation that ain't so simple is the exact sort of discomfort that must be embraced if we are to build tolerance and respect and, ultimately, change. We will never all agree on every bullet point, but we can create tools for respecting each others' struggles and fighting together. This does not just apply to queer liberationists and feminists, but to every gradation of identity and struggle. The discussion was a meditation in listening that was sorely missed from most Occupy spaces I participated in, where the desperate rush to solidarity swept differences under the table.

This is exciting. If we can, within our own activist communities, finally start sitting with discomfort so that we can push through to understanding; if we can swallow our pride and our fears and allow people to actually be different from ourselves without pushing them away; if we can cut the politically correct bullishit and start speaking frankly about what keeps us from fully loving each other, then I am convinced liberation is unstoppable. 

The brilliant panelists and moderators blowing everyone's minds

Also, this is unrelated to the meta-conversation tone of the rest of this post, but I can't talk about the Unite & Fight panel without sharing panelist Malcolm Shank's response to a debate about the merits of radicalism versus reform: "I come from a more social services perspective... Helping people survive is the most radical sort of reform you can do."

* Male-Bodied: A term used to recognize a person who was assigned a male sex at birth, or who identifies themselves as having had/has a male body.

First Thoughts

Many things happen, and all the damn time. Time and its endless mush keeps goo-ing on, not in one direction but all over the place, all thick and floating and sticking and sometimes, rarely, translucent.

What I end up doing (I use the phrase “end up” cause that's what it feels like) with my crazy time is travel on foot and by thumb, finding the humyns who inspire me and diving into the projects that make me alive. I have been traveling to ecovillages, radical queer communities, hoppin cities and wacked out protests. Some of this is intentional, much of this is an unlikely combination of instinct and wind direction.

This traveling, networking some might say, puts me ever in a state of leaned back awe. Sometimes I wonder what the thread is that holds all of this dreaming together, and I realize that I am the common variable in this trip (aka my life thing). Held in this queer feminist anti-racist anarchist-tending love bug is some sort of synthesis of actions and communities that I hope to articulate on these pages. I have learned a lot and will use this writing to connect more threads and learn deeper. For those dedicated to life liberation (all of us in some private way, no?) this is a space for us to gather more tactics, more articulations, and, most importantly, more friends.

Method to the m(adn)ess:

This blog has several categories. I may narrow down or expand what I write about here after I figure out what translates best to blog-o-land, so give me feedback. Really like direct action ideas but hate poems? Really like poems but want more photos? Let me know and then it will get better. This shit should be useful and fun, cause nothing's useful if it ain't fun. My main goal is to synthesize ideas coming from many places and communities and spit them back in a way that is useful for all of us.