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expiry date   
05:54pm 27/02/2006
   
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Philosophy of Two American Johns   
10:31pm 27/01/2006
  I have been thinking a lot about two pediophiliac men who are archtypes of America. And they're both named John. John Smith and Johnny Appleseed. Two hundred years seperate them in real history, but in America's imagination they're close as cousins.

A week ago I wouldn't have thought so. But a week ago, I hadn't read the opening chapter of Micahel Pollan's Botany of Desire nor had I seen Terrence Malick's New World. Neither of these I really wanted to experience, but I was obligated to anyhow (by a class in the first instance, by a filmmaker's reputation and a friend in the second).

Pollan's book is a New York Times bestseller and reads like a feature article in the New Yorker. It is the kind of book similar to the one unfaithfully adapted in the film Adaptation, and the archtype of the book I have been urging a friend of mine to write about the world of World of Warcraft. The book's purpose is to give a "plants-eye-view" of the world, but by mainly reading a whole lot of philosophy and culture into the meanings of particular plants, it reads more like a Pollan-eye view of the world. No matter; Pollan's first chapter is all about apples. But the chapter is ultimately more illuminating about America than apples, because he places at its center one John Chapmen, known to grown elementary school attendees far and wide as Johnny Appleseed. Before reading Pollan, I had the idea that Johnny merely wandered the country side dropping seeds here and there. But this is America of course, and Johnny Chapmen merely hugged the American frontier as an incredibly lucrative commercial venture, colonizing with the best of them. Chapmen set up an orchard anywhere the forecast read "white settlement," and took to whereever a large crop of apples might take. As white settlers strolled in, Chapmen strolled out, pausing only to make a killing selling his apples to the folks coming in on his way to the next Golden Orchard. Given the apple was the main staple of American alcohol until the Prohibition Era, Chapmen made a killing. He also managed to aid in the killing off of all that stood in America's way. Turns out the apple played a key role in colonizing North America. If it was an entirely too anarchronistic an action, I swear I'd fucking boycott the apple.

Speaking of anachronism: enter Terrence Malick's New World, which tells a story that should have died with the little white lier who told it: John Smith. Like Appleseed, the story of Smith is familiar to just about everyone, thanks to Disney's Pocahontas. Given Malick is a philosphy professor and part-time filmmaker, who has only made three films since the 70s (all of them great, including one of my very favorites, Thin Red Line), one'd think he'd do better than a production company that has pumped out something like 30 or 40 animated features over the same time period. One would think wrongfully. Alas, no dice. The film portrays Smith's story of his child lover, Pocahontas, literally verbatim, with several lines of Smith's account provided via Malick's trademark voice-overs. Meanwhile, Pocahontas speaks nary a word, accepting a choice line or two pining after Smith, both in his presence and in his absence (frankfully, there's large elements of this in Thin Red Line too: voiceless indigenous peoples, angry, moody men at war. For me, though other, stronger moments, such as the relationship between Witt and Welsh, manage to make that film).

Both Pallen and Malick think they are telling stories rich with philosophical musing, about the in and outs of overtaking innocence, the domestication of wildness by men caught between the strict civilization as they knew it, and a new world as they dreamed it. Pallen devotes lengthy passages casting Johnny Appleseed as America's Dionsysus; Malick gives us a few voice-overs of Smith pining after a free commenwealth. Yet for both Pallen and Malick, the American frontier and its inhabitants are a perfect medium for the Johns desire, and neither shows any interest in exploring the destruction that desire wrought. Both Johns are cast as friends to the Indians, yet Indian's own voices are conspiciously lacking in both accounts. If it wasn't for that lack, America likely would not remember these Johns so fondly. As Malick ignores, and Pallen, to his credit, alerts us to, is the pedophilia that both these Johns tended towards, as both had a penchant for women much younger than they. Pocahontast could not have been older than 12 or 13 when Smith was said to be involved with her; and Chapmen was once engaged to a child bride, all of 10 years, until, it is said, she broke his heart.

Maybe it would break America's heart to know the truth about these two Johns; maybe that's why Pallen's bestseller's subject is plants, not plunder, and why Malick's film insists it is a tale of love. But in refusing to break America's heart, neither author gives us anything all that new (as Indian Country Today said of Malick's film, Not much new in 'The New World': "The production crew says ''The New World'' is not a history, but a fictional love story between Captain John Smith and Matoaka, aka Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, the powerful chief of the Powhatan Confederacy of Tidewater Algonquian tribes. But it's not really a love story, either. With Smith playing the colonizer and Pocahontas the ''good Indian,'' it's actually a metaphor reinforcing the tragic inevitability of the conquering of America - a story we've heard too often already."). In its relationship with Pocahantas and with itself, I think America could stand to have its heart broken. Maybe then, for once, some truth could shine through.		  
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mutilation of fingertips   
02:02am 25/12/2005
  I suppose I felt cool driving around at 1:30am Christmas morning to Nation of Ulysses' "13-Point Program to Destroy America" blaring on the car stereo. But I slowed down every time I saw a police car (at least 4 of these) and the glaring lights on every other house drove home the fact that I was speeding around in an American suburb. I was driving, I know where I was coming from, but I didn't feel like I was going anywhere.

There is a lot I need to think about, but I'm finding a million differnt ways to keep it off my mind.

Here's one. Saw Michaelangelo Antonoini's The Passenger the other night, made in 1975, now rereleased and at the Crest for a while at $3 US. You know its an Antoinini film when your partner is fast asleep five minutes into the film, and a sizable troupe of teenage girls walks out of the theater after another five (honestly, teenage girls have a lot better things to do then watch the The Passenger, but I'll get to that). That is, the film is, in MST3k parlance, a veritable "honk-shoe," i.e. slow, a snoozer, a bed-time story.

The film has Jack Nicholson playing a British journalist, David Locke, raised in the States, who finds himself in Africa covering a guerilla war. He wanders back to his hotel after getting his jeep stuck in the desert to find the other Enlgishman at the hotel is dead. He decides to trade identities with the dead Englishman, faking his own death and returning to Europe free of his job, his wife, and an adopted child (who we never see). Turns out the dead Englishman was a gunrunner for the guerilla movement, and Locke lets events take him around Europe making meetings in the dead Englishman's date book. He hooks up with Maria Schneider, a young women backpacking through Europe, and they have some sort of romance while Locke can't decide how he kind of maybe perhaps possibly feels about his new identity.

The film is your typical intellectual chin-stroker: it has a dick firmly at its center. What I mean is, the "dilemma" Locke makes for himself is your typical male adventure story in the great patriarchal tradition of the Odyssey or Kerouac or Evasion, where everything a man ought to have responsibility for is thrown to the wind for the sake of an ego (I don't think its a coincidence that Locke was raised in America). Antonini has the good sense to slow everything down, so he gives you a lot of time to think about everything Locke is not thinking about: namely, what he's doing with his life and why he's doing it, questions that he never asks of himself the whole film through. In one of the many flashback scenes, an African witch doctor Locke is trying to interview explains to him that, perhaps the questions Locke is asking of others says more about himself than anything else. Maybe that's Antoinini's point: Locke (and by extension the West) is so busy reporting on others that He never explores Himself and who He is. Maybe that's why the European title of the film is Professione: reporter.

Note the male pronoun. The consequnces of this for Locke are stark enough by the time the film arrives at its artful final sequence, but the consequences for the rest of the world - for society - remain as undeveloped Schneider's character, credited in the film as simply "The Girl." To me, this is evidence enough that to Antonoini, who can't seem to think beyond his own penis, that's all the character really is, the female auxilary to the Dilemma of Western Civilization. A glowing review of the film on Internet Movie Database admits the character is unwritten, but finds her to be "well-played by petite, dusky, sensual Maria Schneider" - that's all the reviewer can muster, basically saying she looks great in a loose-fitting blouse in the Spanish sunlight, because that's about all Antoinini lets her do. What a prick.

Which brings me back to why I figure teenage girls have better things to do than sit through a screening of The Passenger. I could lament how they missed such a brilliant musing example of Film-As-Art; I could lament the fact that such a film, which strikes deep at the dilemma of Man in Modern Times, is not rivaling, say, King Kong at the multiplex. I could, but I won't, because it would be stupid to do so. Not everybody has time to muse over Antoinini (notice i don't even bother to spell the man's name right), and it probably says a lot about me that I do find the time. But its not just a matter of time, because the film appeals to me, it speaks to me. If I didn't know any better, I'd be the heir to Locke. I'd read both the Odyssey and On the Road by the time I was fifteen. I didn't want to like Evasion but I was up to my knees in a dumpster full of trash within weeks of finishing it. And like most of my favorite films, The Passenger is slow, aesthetically pleasing, and terribly overpopulated with overwritten dude characters and underwritten female characters (Thin Red Line *cough* Weekend *cough* or any given Scorsese film). Which is why I am well overdue for another viewing of Born in Flames.

For all of Antoinini's dudeness, i will say The Passenger does come across as more of a critique of aloofness than a celebration. But its a critique that doesn't offer any solutions; for a critique of being alone, its rather circular, because it is solely critique. And if I'm going to take that critique of critique to heart, I've got to realize its 3:00am on Christmas morning - which is why I'm writing like this - and I ought to really consider if this is what I should preoccupied with.		  
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BEYOND BARS conference   
11:53pm 05/11/2005
  BEYOND BARS
The Politics of the Prison Industrial Complex
December 3rd, 10am-5pm
Fairhaven College
FREE! WITH LUNCH PROVIDED by Bellingham Food not Bombs.

A conference bringing together a broad range of speakers and presentations to address the increasing incarceration rate in the United States, and its effect on diverse population in our society. Also a commemoration of Dec. 3rd International of Solidarity with Political Prisoners.

For more information or disability accommodations, please call (360) 650-6804, or e-mail AS.ROP.Social.Issues@wwu.edu.

( List of films and speakers... )		  
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we didn't set out to make a movie   
12:13am 09/08/2005
  "as a very middle class college student & anarchist who rarely has a job, is very single-minded, and often has too much time on his hands, i've done lots of pamphlets and websites over the last few years. its summer, i'm jobless and not doing much, so i thought i'd share them here."  
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whites have lost it   
05:09pm 21/05/2005
  I got sunburned real bad at the annual Skagit Valley Migrant Farm Workers’ march this year – over two weeks later and my pale skin is still peeling. One of those times when it’s obvious that this land isn’t mine, not by any means – when my skin and the sun conspire to remind me that my ancestors don’t have a history here.

Of course, when most white folks get burned, this isn’t what first comes to mind; they just think its time to get sunscreen. When migrant farm workers are marching, a lot of white people react the same way: they’d rather screen it out than give it some thought and accept some responsibility. During the march we’d be calling out middle-aged white dudes, asses planted in their car seats at stop lights, for a honk of support or two; all they could bother to do was shake their heads in disapproval. I’d imagine they think they’re saying ‘no’ to immigrants, but what they’re really doing is saying no to history. Saying, in effect, “no, I don’t know why I am here,” because, of course, we’re all immigrants – even more so, given that we’re indigenous to a continent halfway around the world, not the land of south of here that is so very close by comparison, the land that many farm workers trace their heritage or homeland back to. As a result, knowledge of the land isn’t one of whites’ strong points. The newspapers reported the next day that the mayor of Mount Vernon had opted out of the march for the second consecutive year - instead, he had been attending the opening of a sporting goods store. Apparently, we’d rather play on the land than work it.

It’s not like the day shouldn’t have been significant for white people. This was May 1st after all: to the Skagit Valley Herald, “the unofficial worker's day,” but to many more the world over an official day meant to commemorate the state execution of four anarchist trade union organizers in 1887 by the state of Illinois. The meaning of the day way certainly not lost on the marches organizers. It’s only that over time – and, many would argue, over the course of becoming ‘white’ rather an ethnic immigrant – whites have lost it: even the well-meaning ones among us, have forgotten that bulk of us are workers. Gone with that, then, is the meaning of struggle, especially the meaning of solidarity. We have trouble identifying our own struggle, and so we claim struggles that aren’t ours to claim. A friend of a friend was asked why he was attending the march; he responded, “I’m a farm worker” – this coming from a white dude who pots plants in a posh nursery and who couldn’t define bracero if his life depended on it.

And in a sense, his life does depend on it. If whites don’t own up to our history – and that includes the history being made everyday – I think we’re going to get burned worse than a mere sunburn. As long as the white drivers are still shaking their heads, when that light turns green, the law might say they can go, but they’ll still be stuck. As James Baldwin once wrote, “people who imagine that history flatters them (as it does, indeed, since they wrote it) are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become incapable of seeing or changing themselves or the world.”		  
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9 to 5, 8 to 6, 8 to 10   
04:00pm 28/01/2005
  Hi Shirley,

I recieved your call about the journalist who had spent time in Iraq coming to Western. If you would like, I can fund publicity for the event, and draft fliers if you could send me their information. I need to go over my budget, but I should be able to provide some honorarium too (probably $50 to $100).

I think this is a very, very important event that definitely needs to happen. Thank you for giving me the heads up on it! You are always providing great connections, and I know for a fact that young folks like me really depend on the work you do.

Thanks so much!
-Andrew

The Peace Resource Center is coordinating a visit from Harold Belmont, Sr., a Native American activist. He will be on campus Thursday, February 3rd, and will arrive around 2pm. He is neither student/faculty, and is not being compensated for the visit. His wife Eleanor Belmont will be driving. Could you please provide them a parking pass? Please e-mail me back to confirm yes or no.

Thank you so much!

-Andrew
x6125

Hi Jamie,

Thank you for the thoughtful response! I will definitely let you know what events we have coming up, as well as the outcome of the review board hearing.

Have a great weekend!
-Andrew

Hi Ian,

Thanks so much for the response!

Have a great weekend-
-Andrew

Hey Kyle,

Thanks for such a thoughtful response! You're a true friend (as opposed to a fake friend). I'm glad I've gotten to know you this year.

Have a good weekend, punk.
-Andrew

Thank you so much for the kind response, Courtney! I can assure you it will be very, very helpful.

-Andrew

Any time before Tuesday is cool, I present before the review board on Wednesday.

Thanks so much!
-Andrew

Hi Vicki,

Thanks again for the generous contribution! Danielle from the BSU is mainly who I've been communicating with. Her email is ----------, or you can call the BSU at ------. She can let you know how to get the check to Dixon.

I will be sure and let you know further details about Kadi's visit as they come. We're still hashing out some of the details for that.

Thanks so much!

-Andrew

Thanks for the thoughtful response, Ben, your kind words should prove invaluable!

Thank you for the thoughtful response, Laura, its greatly appreciated!

Thanks Jessica!

The kind words are very much appreciated!

Hi Vicki,

Sorry I didn't let you know sooner - it's not too late to sponsor Dixon. Let me know how UMHE would like to help, and I'll be sure to pass on the proper info as it comes to me.

Thank you!
-Andrew

Hi Toby,

Wow! I wish my dreams were that relavent to my life. I had a dream last night I was playing soccer, which is very odd because I haven't played it for about ten years now...

I was worried that Pippa's show would be interupted by the snow, but the night I attended (closing night) was absolutely packed. The show was fantastic, very very powerful. Apparently, there is a film version being produced that will be shown at the Pickford in a few months, perhaps you'll be able to see the production then.

I talked to Jasmine and Norene today at the Women's Center, and dates that work best for them in March are Monday the 7th, or the 9th through the 11th. We were curious if you were available in April, though I remember you saying you were traveling to Italy sometime in the Spring. At this point, its really what would work best for you. We're very flexible - many, many things are going on in Bellingham for International Women's Day/Month, so if the talk doesn't coincide with the month its not too big a loss.

I was envisioning the lecture as an intro to Emma Goldman, her politics, and their relavance to today, but anything Emma related would be great. I would like to use the event as an occasion to release the zine of 1908 Bellingham newspaper articles I compiled this Summer.

Some other details: How much would you like to be paid for the lecture, and will you need lodging?

Thanks so much, Toby!

-Andrew		  
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ESTU 202   
10:55pm 17/10/2004
  Thanks to Anna's keen eye

It is wrong to believe that humans were meant to be the lords and governors of the Earth and its systems. Instead of shaping our environment to fit our lifestyle, we must shape our lifestyle to fit our environment.
The environment can be seen as a river; we should not presume to regulate its course, nor should we jump in and expect not to make a ripple. So let us wade into the river and teach ourselves how to swim again.
The Earth is life. If we are at odds with the Earth then we are at odds with life. They, who do not live in harmony with the Earth, do not live. Those who find their harmony with the earth and all it's peoples (not just humans) are the only people who can truely be called Alive

I agree with you entirely. I think it is shocking how much sense us "hippie liberals" speak and yet........we are still the crazy outcasts in modern society. So many of our peers across the world agree with our envronmental idealogies, with sustainability et cetera and we aren't represented. I sure hope our generation can change the world for the better when we take control. I also hope it isn't entirely fukt by that time as well.

"Hippie liberals" are not the only ones who care about the environment. I respect nature and care deeply of its condition, yet I am far from anything close to a "hippie". Also, the term "hippie" is pathetic and cliche. The modern "hippie" is nothing more than a fasion statement and a substance abuser. They are currently related to the material world more than they are with trees. "Hippie" is not a political ideology, so don't associate it with being liberal. I mean, come on, hippies are from the sixties and seventies anyway; it's a really outdated and irrelevant expression. The so called "hippies" of today are not as bold and inspiring as the hippies of the past, so, therefore you don't even really have the right to call yourself one. If you want to label yourself as one who loves nature, please, use "tree-huger;" it's much more appropriate.

I vehemently disagree with Kevin about hippies on a number of points
1.) Hippies are not substance abusers. This is a myth created by the media to denounce hippies.
2.) Being a hippie is not a fad. It is a tradition that should be expanded upon.
3.) Hippies are not dead. They live on in everyone who seeks sustainable alternatives to the destructive consumer lifestyle.
In conclusion, I would like to ask a question to you personally Keven; Who the hell are you to dictate what is and is not an acceptable identity?

Sam, you must be a hippie, or at least a sympathizer. It seems that I have offended you. However, don't take it so personally. It's just my general opinion of a subject that I am not very interested in. I'm sure I could research it further to produce a more viable argument, but the desire's just not really there.

I am not, in any way, attempting to legislate my unfounded beliefs. I am merely expressing them. Yet, I am not sorry, in any shape or form, for doing so. It is a discussion board, by the way. I'm glad we've had this discussion. Please feel free to continue it.

Honestly Kevin, your comments have burned my heart, and so has your continued ambivalance. You say things that are cutting, inflamatory, and mean, and then you say, "don't take it so personally, its just my general opinion of a subject I'm not very interested in." If so, were you just trying to incite an argument just for the sake of arguing? Because that is exactly what it seems like.
Personally, I have my reasons for identifying as "a hippie, or at least a sympathizer," but I feel no need to elaborate on this so long as you continue in your stance of blissful ignorance. All I ask is that you pleas refrain from attempting to define or dictate anything about which you have only, "unfounded beliefs." Doing so will prevent you from emotionally wounding and offending someone the way in which you have offended me		  
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Last sentence not to be taken as a punchline.   
02:48am 31/08/2004
  Event2: the minute you try and pin it down, they remind you the self tears off in a million directions. I'm aware, painfully, of the so many songs, so many advertisements, which put the act of driving alone into a context that pins you down, to youth, to "being" alienated (so often familiar, yet both words entirely inappropriate). Hell, I'm young, I'm alienated, addressing hell in the first person; and I drove alone tonight. The moon was just full, out of sight, the radio played those songs so often juxtaposed with murder scenes on telvision shows in order to denote irony. Drove across class lines, city lines, county lines - I sensed the first, read the second two on street signs. My grandfather, if I remember right, as it was told to me, as a bureaucrat at the FDA, had it in on the FEMA bomb shelter list.

What I don't want to do is read the signs into the lines.

Event1: what had directly preceded "being" alone was being together, where/in which things needn't be hung with a question mark, because the context is felt, if not understood. Falling alseep next to Anna everynight needn't make sense; I needn't a five year plan here, I love her that much (and more).

This forum has the connotations of the former more than the latter As does being 20 years old, white, male, attempting to write something that pins down feelings oh so many feelings, demarcates lines where there really aren't any, and I'm always writing alone, early in the morning when I ought to be asleep, when sleep won't answer that question. Mario Savio once said something about throwing your body on the gears once the machine becomes so odious, I'm sure he wasn't much older than I am now at the time. But he didn't mention how his and mine bodies are greased from the get-go, to get through the gears despite the discomfort. (Which was perhaps how Kerouac could sign in his writing 1, but drink himself to death on 2, leaving race lines and class lines scrambled and tangled; and oh how we take his book to be a bible). Savio became a professor, after all, didn't he? If I haven't seriously entertained similar thoughts, i've at least invited them to dinner. Question looming: what to make?

We invite our friends to remind us of the first instance; we invite ourselves to forget. Theodor Adorno said, among other things, "To say 'we' and mean 'I' is one of the most recondite insults." If you're wondering what the fuck I'm saying, and I know I am, I gather you've been insulted, with good reason (If you're wondering in what sense I mean "reason," I'd wonder whether you're too comfortable). As if reading the poetry of a 14 year-old (white boy who's so goddamn sure he's middle class) who has read nothing but Allen Ginsberg. There's still somethign of that little boy inside of me.

Last sentence not meant to be taken as punchline of cannibal joke.		  
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he was an anarchist, he tried his best but it wasnt good enough   
11:57pm 17/07/2004
  its riding home at half past eleven with a drink or two in you that you come up with clunkers like "politics is finding yourself and making sense of the mess that is humanity." Which is as true as far as it reflects the position I'm in right now - telling people, routinely, that this the juncture when school has to start having some coherent purpose or I'll drop out (which isn't about to happen). Given that i was acquitted even before trial. Even (especially) if I'm to be gainfully employed.

Care to categorize things in waves? You might remember me as the radical boy with a thick-skulll who wanted to change the world and was going to have you hear about it. You might not hear it, but the will is still there, only the world stopped making a whole lot of sense. That'll happen when you have to take on more personal responsibility for it, start watching your purchases not in terms of ethical origin but ticket price, start watching the world rather than heedlessly throwing yourself into it hoping to leave a tear here or there (I'm thinking about the bike ride in Bellevue, where I was nearly overrun by a bright Magenta SUV soon (after seeing Anna and her seeing me) - or dressing as an elf in the shopping mall of the very same city - where did that daring go, anyway?). There's a class analysis there I'm too lazy to write right now. You'll have to wait for the next issue of the New Formulation for that, I guess: a "comparative book review examining the value of recent publications to the development of a contemporary anarchist theory and politics."

I want to hear the anarchism in your life, your personal story, whether you know whether its there or not. I went to read God and the State, autonomous Marxism, the like, it made sense, but I love hearing your voice. Where we're at. What brought you to dance here on Grant Street to tunes twenty years old (will we have to stop dancing to talk?). I feel we're all on similar questions, gone past circumstances unlike. At the Anarcha-feminist discussion group (I didn't quite warm to his anti-hierarchical analysis). When David has laundry to do. In the books I'm reading (Foucault's fun, but I've taken to Colonize This! faster - and our reading group is a boy's club). Aaron's (been?) in Palestine and we havn't even spoken. Hoffman, what of you? Do I plan to stay in Bellingham (between the townies and the transients). Can I touch the jail? Can I?

Is it fair to depend on the responses of others to decide?		  
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god i need a cola now   
01:14am 20/03/2004
  It's when I'm home that my ego finds time to write (home). My ego is bounded in Bellingham, with bliss and rightly so. Someone to share a meal with (I'm working on doing more than dishes), someone to share a kiss with, but/and (dialectically) so much more - each of these journal entries might as well be an ode to Anna (yeah, that's right, LiveJournal.com entries. Who writes sonnets anymore?).

Its (in part) in her absence that the computer screen becomes a mirror and Im checking my vanity again, writing in this again for y'all to read, because I probably talk to you less often than you check this thing. Who are "you"? I could be you. Who about that?

So I've let my guard down at home (or I haven't picked up the Adorno) and watched a zombie movie (watched is about all I did, dare not claim I thunk it too); late night network television ("Have you heard they're building a plane that can seat 1,000 people? Or as they call it at the border, a truck." And here I was expecting a 9/11 joke); drank Hip Hop soda, downloaded a song I first heard on Music Television - and the radio (all those in the know can catch the subject's reference).

But bringing down the guard hasn't been all mass culture (Rock n roll song: "The old guard is dead! The old guard is dead! Regroup & strategize." Footnote: Rocknroll isn't strategy). In a rare victory for me (its that ego speaking) Ive kept the meets with people to book reading ratio to the proper side (you guess which side is proper). Anna (a must, of course!!), Alex (currently couch-surfing at an NYU thanks to Mynameisben.com) and then -we hope- Anders (fencing). And then seeing John and Jason after such a long time gives me that resolve to kick ass again - neither of them takes shit, and know it (but don't need to show it). Jason will soon make raw fish his and living. Good to hear John is still an anarchist but does not want the label (and all the better for it).

Back In Bothell, its fascinating to know or ponder where everyone goes post-highschool. But where is yr. analysis? In preparing to study class, I took another look at Boob Jubilee (a jubilee of the educated of its own), bell hooks's where we stand: class matters (Where do I stand? Answering questions with questions: Who has to study class? I do.), and a third of Joanna Kadi's Thinking Class.

My mother harped on my father's class origins; in taking his defense, did class trump patriarchy? The danger is in turning race,class,gender into a game of rock,paper,scissors, where one always trumps another.

There will be no trumping in this analysis, young white middleupperclass man; and thus, hopefully, this skull will take in enough to apply to what I've studied already (and what I'm aspring to fight everyday). Condensing the 22 page study of the Whatcom County Jail -and too much more- into something worth your reading.

An outline I scrawled on notebook paper.
1. Law & Justice Plan - ignores society's dynamics, takesthe institution as the starting point, and thus those in power
-Community dialogue assumes community has a voice
police work p.r.
2. Who are they listening to? who has the voice?
Downtown b-ham merchants
3. Prison becomes a place to put people, to not face the problems of the community
4. Poverty: the problem of WC
5. What to do about it, what will happen if we dont

On Tuesday, I was diagnosed with another two cavaties. And in other news, my trial was postponed - for the last time, they promise.

(I used too many parantheses (dialectically)).		  
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every single judgment must be ‘subjugated’ by another so ... the whole process represents the truth   
11:47pm 23/12/2003
  I could find a parallel or two between my life and the recent film Lost in Translation. I could, if I wanted to. Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson play a man and a woman, respectively, both of whom wander around an expensive Tokyo high-rise hotel with nothing to do. They also wander around a highly privileged social position. The thing is, all those who share their position - white, upper class, United States citizens, in other words, anyone not Japanese - are depicted in the film as terribly superficial. The Japanese, for their part, are hardly depicted at all. Too bored with their hotel rooms but too smart for superficiality, Murray and Johansson run around a neonlit, arcade-laden Tokyo still doing next to nothing (to somewhat of a New Wave soundtrack). They kiss at the end, though that doesn't change much of anything.

See, I thought Lost in Translation was a bad film. I don't want to be able to draw so many parallels to myself – I don't want to lead a bad life. Though I'm writing this to a New Wave soundtrack (Ladytron!), I don’t want to wander around – I have something to do, especially given this highly privileged social position. I won’t allow my life to be reduced to a next-to-nothing narrative, though I know how it easy it is – after all, I’m home from college.

What Lost in Translation was getting at – or what it thought it was getting at – was the dynamic between Johansson and Murray. The dynamic hadn’t much meaning thanks to its context within the film. Of all my life’s dynamics, I figure meaning is important. So that’s what I’ve been trying to get at in my life.

Maybe the film’s problem was that it’s director, Sofia Coppola, couldn’t help herself, given she’s probably had a privileged life of her own, being daughter of Francis Ford Coppola (known for such films as the Godfather triology, “Apocalypse Now” and “Jack”) and all.

Think I might have the same problem – can’t help myself? Whenever I write about myself, I turn it into a fucking essay.

Without writing a script, I’ll say that life has been good, and I haven’t an excuse to say otherwise. Last quarter ended, proving to myself that I can handle 19 credits, a misdemeanor trial (now postponed until February), a house that’s a headache, and write a good paper in the process (on The State, see).Which isn’t to say I’m not thankful for a break – that headache has become a migraine, and Anna and I are on the outlook for new living quarters.

Anna, by the way, has kept me sane through and through. She holds me together. Love is passion, but a reprieve too. What I’m not thankful for over the next few weeks is that we are separated, each at our respective houses. We visit on her lunch breaks and wait for Christmas to end, so we can get back to one another. Fortunately, she was over for dinner tonight for a while, and we exchanged gifts. I’ve now got Ladytron (whats in my ear), Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Outlaw Woman (my mother kept asking, “was she in prison?”), a 5-ingredient Vegetarian Cookbook (a first step towards cooking for myself, one hopes), Boggle Deluxe (no more of that 4x4 shit!), and a Richie Rich money clip ($!). Though the greatest gift of all will be the lived experience of sharing an apartment, but that’s coming… and they say patience is a virtue. Anna, meanwhile, made off with some Le Tigre remixes, Jamie Oliver (as seen on television), four books on women’s liberation, and a Sylvia Plath bio (not, we hope, a sensuous love story – as opposed to our relationship).

Seeing Anna as much as possible, I’m also hoping to see the others in my life around here that make it worth living. Since I’ve been back. First visited Jeff on his lunch break deep in the heart of Redmond, and we caught up on what we’re doing for the revolution. Jeff really inspires me with all the work he does – just his living example is like a boot to my ass. Later, shared a meal with Alex, who’s had a girlfriend lately, and a birthday too. My fingers are crossed that I’ll cross paths with Aaron, Ben, Jason, John – and Jeff and Alex again – before I retreat back to Bellingham.

Filling in the empty space with reading Detroit: I do Mind Dying, Malcolm X Speaks, Still Black Still Strong, an essay about Adorno, parts of Ward Churchill’s From a Native Son, piecing together an essay on Reason and Revolution and Unorthodox Marxism, and thinking.

Thinking mostly about what my return to Bellingham will mean – besides a new residence, and much more time with Anna, that is – and where I’ll be putting my energy. Thoughts: Studying prison abolition & the police; Whatcom County’s new prison; learning prisoner support; working with David through the Piece Resource Center (experience so that I might have a chance at getting the job next year); staying committed to Gender Avengers; distributing the A Word; putting up with legal matters (or as Midori wrote me, "personal applications of the individual testing the state"); giving my peers the benefit of the doubt; keeping up with Jobs with Justice; Dan First Scout Rowe’s class on Minorities in the Military; keeping my ego in check; cheering on Radical Praxis; Social Change (the class); social change (in general); and I don’t know what else. I’ll know soon enough.

Isn’t it obvious? I am working hard at seeming to be working hard.		  
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Why are you here? You're here to go...   
04:20pm 24/09/2003
 
mood: looking forward
Sustainibility and growth. This is what the guy with the beard and sandals across from me was talking about, while I wondered whether or not he was a cop or a fed. This sort of wondering is a bad habit -even if its what to be expected after the summer I've had- and I may be giving Fairhaven too much credit by engaging in it. But cop or not (I'll say not), this guy -Luke is his name- had raised a good point: sustainibility and growth pose two very serious challenges to any group's success in work towards social change. A pertinent point too, because "Social Change" is the name of the course I'm taking. Luke mentioned it during that preliminary introduction session that every college seminar seems to have. This particular seminar has gotten me incredibly enthusiastic, as has this particular quarter, as has this particular year.

Sustainibility and growth. Not only a challenge organizationally, but personally, and you've got to do it consciously for it to be effective. With Luke, for instance, I know better than to assume he is, or anyone else for that matter, a cop - the thought simply crossed my mind. But Luke was not the only person I found myself second-guessing - and with him it was done only half-seriously. As students described their particular organizing experiences and interests, they each ran a sort of gauntlet through my mind: is that feasible? is that effective? is that... revolutionary?

Sometimes, as in this situation, it may be best to then second-guess yourself - what is feasibility? what is effectiveness? what is revolutionary? I realize I havn't the concrete solutions anymore than anyone else in the room, nor am I a part of a network or group of people are approximating solutions, at least to my satisfaction. And we're all here, in this class, to achieve just that, if I can assume we all agree on the syllabus. There will be room in the future to bring up my concerns, and for others to bring up theirs. There's really no hurry when I look at what's in store for me.

After class, most of the students struck up lively conservations with one another, and I had to wind my way through the small crowded space to become what appeared to me to be the first person to exit the room. I found myself frustrated at my inability to breach that space constructed between myself and others. On my way down the hall, I doubled-back realizing I needed a signature from the class instructor for an indepedent study. In the process of explaining to her the prospects of my year, I realized I was explaining them to myself as well.

Im at a moment in my life where I'm reading more books than meeting new people. But I'm also in a very good position to change this, to establish the relationships I feel can facilitate all the growth I feel I recquire to network and approximate those solutions. Social Change is one oppurtunity. So are a host of other classes I will be taking. Living in a house with 9 other people presents another. And finally, moving in with Anna is becoming yet another highlight in a relationship which I find time and again literally defines "sustainibility and growth."

In fact, I'm due back at that home now, may even be late. Home? Yet another thing to look forward to.		  
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no, just busted!   
01:19am 12/06/2003
  On my way out the door this morning, in between a kiss and a goodbye, Anna and I heard the tune of a marching band, and upon stepping outside, saw a long column of middle schoolers marching - as enthusiastically as one would imagine middle-schoolers marching - on up the street. I later went walking, not marching, to my dormitory to meet with my mother, to pack and clean. A year ago, I wrote of my graduation; today, after having witnessed my sister's, I apologized to her for the banality of last years ceremony. Ceremonies, it seems, or anything willing to go by that name, are banal by definition.

I have a legal ceremony - court date - coming up this Tuesday, June 17th. "This, in fact, is the week that saw my first arrest. For protesting; moreover, I should add, for protesting the police... But to the point: whereas this is a pressing situation for myself, for most of America – including most of this country’s oppressed – I amounted to little more than a tourist. In the holding cell, not only was I distinguished by demeanor, dress, and the color of my skin – the institution itself worked in my favor. For me “doing time” amounted to seven hours without bail; but for those who sat around me, Chicano; next to me, Black; across from me, poor; it could amount to days, weeks, even years." I refuse to make this into more than it is, though quoting myself (see link to Baldwin essay below) is certainly a sure sign of ever-increasing levels of hubris. But I'll get back to that.

Speaking of arrests: "What a fuckin' moron" was the common response to the plight of one Paul Revak yesterday, and I concur to a point. True, the FBI could have more to do with writing this story than the P.I.'s reporter. But this country continues to breed so much isolation, anger and stupidity - in many ways the third a result of the first two - I'm ready to believe it (and I dont assume Im immune to any isolation, anger, and stupidity - but can I say without risking hubris that Paul is a lot more stupid than I am?); in all, makes me want to return to Emma Goldman's essay on political violence, and in a fashion, Leon Czolgosz. Paul came to a meeting or two for the student walkout; a friend recalls him as proclaiming, in discussion of police relations, "As a peace movement, I think we'd be ideologically recquired to cooperate with the police." I have scant remembrance of the fellow myself. No matter, our friend Paul needs to take another look at the real legacy of John Brown.

Lastly: Back to hubris; mine for sure, but Murray Bookchin's too. I've mentioned this journal is about vanity. While I'll never reach the point where I purchase the URL "mynameisandrew.com" *wink*, neither am I immune. So below are listed papers Ive written this year that I feel Ive accomplished something with. See if you agree with me.

Ever-Increasing Levels of Hubris: Problems of Knowledge, Difference and Solidarity in Murray Bookchin's Social Ecology -
After this Im thoroughly through with social ecology... I hope. 16 pages of pure Bookchin critique. An attempt at fairness.

No Name in the Street -
A reflective essay on James Baldwin's book.

Between Whiteness and a Hard Place: White Liberals and the Rhetoric of the Black Panther Party -
What the title says.

Adorno and Sports and Polemics -
A critique of the sport culture industry by way of an exposition on Theodor Adorno's few sentences worth of sport-critique.

The Frankfurt School -
This paper explains who the fuck Theodor Adorno is.

Race Traitor -
Introduction to and critique of Race Traitor. I would change this paper some if I revised it now.

The American Revolution -
My excuse to read Bookchin's account of the American revolution.		  
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Blindness, Lonliness, and Terror, the first principle... cultivated in order to deny the two others   
01:04am 26/05/2003
  It's now gotten to be 1:05am and exhaustion sets in after an evening spent with my family and a night spent with James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. The way I experience my family has developed a tendency to change over every few weeks of college - something I don't think I was fully conscious of until this evening. Memorial Day is my mother's birthday, but tonight was the occasion to celebrate it. High school English teacher Dave Hansen was seated at the bar half of this one Edmond's "bar & grill" - I saw his smiles, but I'm too young to enter the bar, or so my story goes. That prompted my sister Annette, a current Hansen student, and I, a Hansen veteran, to discuss his oral book report assignments, mostly in terms of their tendency to display the insipid lives of upper (middle?) class mostly white kids.

In the discussion between sis and I, all our upper (see how I've taken to writing "middle?" That's what college should do to you) class class-mates social privileges were, as usual, taken for granted between us. I didn't think so much until, as I said, I sat down to The Fire Next Time. If anything inspires, Baldwin inspires. Just ask my friend "anti-racist David" (as he is known in some circles) Cahn, "Baldwin fan-boy" (self-professed) and all around no-shit-prophet (that's what he's been for me). His weblog is as full of Baldwin transcrictptions as it is loaded with infrequent bursts of frustrated vitriol (e.g. "Irrelevance!!!!"), but I, for one, don't blame the guy: this journal would be the same way if it wasn't for my vanity.

Anyhow. Annette is in fact the reason I have a copy of the book on hand: I had it sent to her after she confided in me Easter sunday her desire to read a book by a white racist - the KKK bigot variety is what she had in mind - in order to confront an illogic she couldn't herself in any way understand. I immediately spent the next hour of the car ride explaining to my captive audience what white racism is. Try as I might, I concluded Baldwin could do a better job of it, reccomended the book, and she agreed to read it. And she has read it, this weekend. The past twenty-four hours, in fact. And she says she didn't like it. I read it in the past few hours. And I say I dont like it - I love it. "Love" says Baldwin, "takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."

My goal is that she will like it by Tuesday, due date of her book report. And whether or not I succeed, whether or not she takes from The Fire Next Time less to be taken for granted, James Baldwin will be my epilogue:

"Something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they begin to distrust their own reactions as deeply as they do here, and become as joyless as they have become. It is this individual uncertainty on the part on the part of white American men and women, this inability to renew themselves at the fountain of their own lives, that makes the discussion, let alone elucidation, of any conundrum - that is, any reality - so sumpremely difficult. The person who distrusts himself has no touchstone for reality - for this touchstone can be only oneself. Such a person interposes between himself and reality nothing less than a labyrinth of attitudes. And these attitudes, furthermore, though the person is usually unaware of it (is unaware of so much!), are historical and public attitudes. They do no relate to the present any more than they relate to the person."		  
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the world is on fire   
12:44am 23/03/2003
  stillbornherring: my girlfriend says I muttered "smash the state" in my sleep
stillbornherring: Im scared
blim8183: HAHAHAHA
stillbornherring: dont laugh
stillbornherring: i worked hard to be that single-minded

Not that AIM (an acronym I'd rater identify with American Indian Movement) converstaions occupy much of my time, but I'm in Bothell now on a Saturday night, 12:46am, and those few lines of dialogue speak volumes about my state of mind, and the past few days (and the State).

I'll admit the State chose where we begin, a Wednesday night, white college kids on couches shaking our heads at the television screen. But finals were over for most of us (but not all), and while the bombs were dropping we rallied our own troops. With our drum contingent, War on Terrorism banner, and 15+ people, 8:00pm and despite the Residential Advisors rather forcefully advising us to be quiet (a very RA thing to do) we made our way North across campus passed the cheers and jeers of dormitoryd and bothered (our drums are very loud) students. One (a girl, I was told later) threw a plastic bottle. I saw it hit the street, but was to single-minded to give it much thought, choosing instead to beam over the fact that we had just taken the street the bottle hit. We marched onto Indian Street, the road leading down the hill upon which our Ivory Tower is perched, and attracted the attention of local residents. At this point I personally registered more cheers than jeers. Several people joined us, and eventually so did two hands-off bicycle police. As we rounded the corner towards our destination, to the the Federal Building, spirits were high. Eros was in full effect. Anna was the brunt of many kisses. I would later tell her the night the night had been "perfect;" she rightfully sobered me up with the reminder that the war is on.

I spent the morning of Thursday, March 20th, (be)moaning the fact that James H. Schuster Aka The Man Aka Mr. Kent State had ordered all our walkout fliers (which numbered well over a hundred) to be torn down, as we had decided earlier that week to stage a larger unmolested-by-finals-week walkout on April 4th. On top of that, he had seen to it that Western Anti-war Movement (the impotent white activist vanguard club) was called that morning to sponsor the walk-out (for which the two people in that group have done but little of the organizing for) - because you can't have a successful campus event without bureaucracy. Those of us with the drums made it to Red Square five minutes late and in a round about fashion, fearing the worst. True, there stood Schuster with his family of all things; but there also stood several hundred students. At 12:30pm we took up the drums (albeit at Schuster's blessing), played, then two professors spoke, then we marched to the federal building, the same route we had traveled the evening before. This time there were cops on sex bicycles, but they might as well have been invisible. As we pulled a U-turn in front of the federal building, a hard rain began to fall and my revolutionary furvor just about went limp. Those in the crowd decided to head towards the the Herald building, and we followed along. Passed their building and their employees head shakes and middle fingers (we always knew objectivity was a joke), on up the street. No one saw it coming. Not the police. Not those in the crowd. Not me. We merged onto I-5, up the onramp, up the hill, over the guard railing. Bellingham Police must not have crowd-control contingency plans. No doubt they're being drawn up after what we pulled. Taking I-5 was riotous affair, in the sense of joy, not property destruction. So many people I had never seen, never seen so happy. We drummed through three different beats without stopping. While the risk of discouragement came with the Mac truck drivers' frequent thumbs-down, my heart skipped a beat when one truck rolled by blaring its horn, those in the cabin waving us a peace sign: the drivers themselves were Arab. I realize now we didn't know what we were doing going into it, but we knew what we were doing once we had done it. This is one for history, as it was in 1970.

If you're into media, photos, the like: we made the front page of the middle-finger wavin' Bellingham Herald. Bellinghampeace.org had photos, but they're down right now. See instead indymedia.

Today: came to Seattle hoping to partake in anti-tuiton hike training, but it was postponed due to the anti-war events. In so many words: Attempted snake march. More riot police than I had ever seen, well into the hundreds. More ruthless than I had ever seen. Grandchildren crying. Old men tackled and bleeding from the forehead. Old ladies radicalized like nothing else. We were corraled, we were ordered this way and that. As days go, this was a long one. But as we told the riot police as we dispersed "See you tomorrow." As exhausted as I am right now, it'll take a night of sleep to determine whether or not that's a promise (or a threat?) I can fulfill.		  
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Rudi Dutschke's white riot helmet   
01:59am 08/03/2003
  Adorno tells us that thinking sublimates anger. But where to? If depression is anger turned inward... It's so late, I've been working on this paper so many hours, I can't bring myself to up and leave the fucking computer lab.

( For now we'll call it resignation )		  
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so Ive been accused of arrogance, but towards whom?   
12:13am 12/02/2003
 
mood: privileged
a comrade writes:
>Just a question to ponder: When does the support of
>one idea turn into the intolerance of another?

In one respect, I see it as a matter of ideology and dogma. There's a saying that goes "Do you have ideas, or do ideas have you?" When do the clutches of an concept keep you from (unconciously) imagining possibilities outside that concept? And when does that lead to an unwillingness or inability to engage with someone else's idea?

Then we have to think about how our institutions today are often predicated on ideology that compromises more ethical possibilities. And should we tolerate these institutions if they legitimate and perpetuate human suffering, inequality, injustice, oppression, etc.? I for one have high intolerance for human suffering, inequality, injustice, oppression, and the like, as well as the ideologies which only serve as apologetics for that suffering - capitalism is what first comes to mind, but also the supposed "need" for societal authority; as well as the indifference and ignorance they both tend to breed.

While I have intolerance for particular ideas, is it productive to be completely unreasonable when engaging with someone with those ideas; that is, intolerant of the people who harbor those ideas? I think this is where understanding and tact come into play, which are infinitely important. Like I mentioned above, people (including myself) often carry around these ideologies and attitudes unconciously - like, say, internalized racism.

At the same time, though, do certain ideologies impliticitly and/or explicitly refuse to engage on the terms of civil discussion, entertaining the possibility of alternatives outside of the status quo? Do certain institutions operate in a way that they can not imagine nor afford any alternatives? When does it reach the point that one has to take up arms against something (figuratively or not) and refuse to tolerate it?

I don't know if I've answered the initial question, or just answered it with more questions. I suppose I should just end by saying intolerance in and of itself is not a such bad thing, because in a lot of ways all that activists of any stripe work for is based on intolerace - an intolerance of war, human suffering, profit over people, and so on. We must also acknowledge that intolerance can take unreasonable forms - but we also must ask ourselves "when does the unreasonable act make sense?" (I got that from Race Traitor).

Please excuse my penchant for these blasted disembodied ideas, and my lack of actual material details about my day to day existence - I'll just say university life here has to be the most privileged lifestyle for a most very privileged white male in the most privileged country in the world; that "Universities are nothing but a mechanism for integrating into capitalist society!" and that this point is lost to the "enlightened" administrator James H. Schuster who tells us in regards to the walkout, that from his protest days at Kent State, he knows it's not cool to work with "The Man" (his words), but that we really should at this point because the admin. wants to work with us on this - but, in Mackenzie's blessed words - do they want to work with us, or do they really want us to work with them? The alarm sounds on the latter.

Still, some unreasonable acts make little sense at all. Not unlike the Japanese exchange students who are currently looking at some really grotesque giant penis porn in the computer lab, right in front of me.		  
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treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity   
11:23pm 12/01/2003
 
mood: white
Apologies to you Hoffman, but I thought this was long enough it merited some livejournal coverage for my more secret admirers.

While I dont know shit about Christopher Day or Huey P. Newton, I have been learning some shit about Race Traitor. It's a lot more coherent than I thought at first. And a really simple and easy read. So far I'm impressed (I've only read the first section of the anthology), though the verdict isnt out yet - and their militancy both irks and intrigues me at the same time. I wasnt too blown over by the Ruckus presentations Ive seen (one in Seattle and that one in Vermont), not at all, but this Race Traitor stuff is interesting.

I'll give you a little rundown on their schtick. First off, we know that race isn't biological, but strictly social. RT seeks to define the social nature of race in America as being predicated on the very notion that "white" is superior. "People were not favored socially because they were white," they write; "rather they were defined as 'white' becuase they were favored."

They do a great deal of exploring what this "whiteness" is all about.

(There's this movie out right now About Schmidt. Unlike Gangs of New Yowk I liked it as a film, but I mention it here because I think it reflects society in this respect so well it could have been called About Schmidt's Whiteness. I can't and won't go into it here, but I'll just say that there is a scene where a distraught-with-boredom Jack Nicholson looking in a mirror smears his face with moisturizer in a sort of reverse Al Jolson black-face. The critique of whiteness is probably not what was intended, but its what a righteous college student like myself reads into it.)

"There is a great deal of history subsumed (and lost), in the casual use of the term 'white'" they remark. This is purportedly illustrated by the fact that immigrants into the U.S., e.g. Itlians or the Irish, were not always considered "white." One of the RT editors, Noel Ignatiev, has written a book called How the Irish Became White. The movie Gangs of New York (which I thought wasnt all that great) generally (not explicitly) depicts the type of assimiliation this involved.

Beyond current anti-racist politics dealing with white skin privilege in terms of awareness, Race Traitor deals with it as a revolutionary issue. In this this vein, they believe the issue of race is boiling in this country, and at any time it may boil over, a moment "when the routine assumptions of race breakdown;" what they call "a new Harper's Ferry." I think they give the LA riots as an example. They believe race becomes a revolutionary issue when enough so-called whites have defected from the white race, and seize that moment of crisis.

According to them, whites give up their "whiteness" by making it "unreliable as a determinant of behavior;" by not being docile to cops, for example. They mention Cop Watch. They ask "if the police, the courts and the authorities in general were to start spreading around indiscriminately the treatment they normally reserve for people of color, how would the rest of whites react?"

In Race Traitor, they generally give examples of individual "race treason," (I havnt got to this section of the book yet) becuase in part, they say, collective struggles have yet to emerge. I suppose Ruckus is an attempted form of collective struggle, but I have yet to read up on Ruckus enough to relay my thoughts (though they recently updated their website and it looks like their organization will soon be a go).

I just read a fantastic book which I really really enjoyed and reccomend: The Imagination of the New Left by George Katsiaficas, and its got me thinking about these ideas of organizing and spontaneous revolution. Take moments like Paris 1968, or more recently, Argentina; their is a huge legitimacy crisis for the government, capitalism, etc. In a furvor, people generally take control of their own lives - but most often, the "forces of reaction" win out because people had no new system to usher in. I think one point of organizing is to look out for these moments of crisis, or even provoke them (much like Cindy Milstein talked about in her Towards Direct Democracy class I took this summer - creating a situation which makes people realize the immense lack of power and democracy that exists). This coincides with the Race Traitor approach on many levels.

It also coincides in a lot of ways with the organizing Im doing on the student walkout here in Bellingham. There is a ton of interest in this, and people are jumping on board like crazy. This opens up a space for a more radical critique, a space to build a stronger movement for what could amount to rev-o-lution. I dont think this walkout will create the same situation as the U.S. Student strike in 1970 (which Nixon administration officials said was the worst American crisis since the Civil War!), but it could be a step in that direction.

Im taking some rad classes this quarter (not trimesters) alongside this Race Traitor independent study. I also got enrolled in a class on socialism (basically everything from Fourier to the Zapitistas) which should be great. Bookchin's "What is social ecology?" is on the syllabus, and the teacher is a self-proclaimed anarchist.

I still havnt called Atlee.		  
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Note to self: purchase newer, more expensive designer ties   
02:57am 02/01/2003
  I've already somewhat recounted (here and here) my great experiences with the Mourning Commute Collective. Well, today we hit it big in a spotlight article in the Seattle Times. Overall, I think its one of the better pieces on anarchism I've seen in corporate media. Even better, the reporter who wrote it, Leslie Fulbright - her boyfriend is in Infernal Noise Brigade.

A few reservations: 2/3rds of the collective in the photo are women, but the two guys are the only ones quoted. And maybe we shouldn't have taken the oppurtunity to take more cheap potshots at Eugene. My largest reservation, though, is where I'm quoted as saying, "Whether it is possible for society to exist without any rules is not the question — it is how we can help the system improve." The last bit about helping "the system improve" comes off as a little reformist, doesn't it? Would never go over on Infoshop.org I figure.

One last question: why the fuck didn't anyone tell me the tie looked so tacky?!?!


Preaching anarchy amid affluence can be daunting

Mourning Commute Collective members are, from left, Aaron Kuller, 19, Aleksandra Hungerford, 18, Alicia Tan, 15, Kayleigh McEwan, 16, Hilary Lawton, 16, and Andrew Hedden, 19.


Who: The Mourning Commute Collective.


What: Activist group for Eastside social anarchists.


Origin: About two years ago, Aaron Kuller and Andrew Hedden started the group after months of discussing politics at a Redmond cafe. "We wanted to do more than just talk about radical ideas," said Kuller, 19. The group now has seven active members, ages 15 to 23.


Actions: Since they united, Mourning Commute members have dressed as striking elves to inform shoppers at local malls about sweatshops, published an eight-page newsletter and organized two Redmond teach-ins, both focused on U.S. policy and the Middle East.


Anarchy defined: Anarchy means "without authority." Mourning Commute's vision derives from that definition and from the philosophy that power corrupts and people should be free to act according to their own conscience. "Whether it is possible for society to exist without any rules is not the question — it is how we can help the system improve," Hedden said. "We are about empowering people and raising consciousness."


Fighting stereotypes: Members know the word "anarchy" often evokes images of leather-clad punk rockers, broken glass or hooded teens setting cars on fire. Mourning Commute says it differs from others in the movement who seem bent on destruction — like some based in Eugene, Ore., whose hostile antics often get them ink. True anarchy, they say, is not about disorder and chaos but a world without domination. The group believes true democracy can only exist through true community.


How to build community: Members believe community-oriented alternatives — gardens, block clubs, housing cooperatives, barter networks, alternative schools, small theaters, study groups, neighborhood newspapers and public-access television — will help meet neglected community needs. "When people become less dependent on capitalism, they become more socially responsible, dependent on each other and skilled at discussing social issues," Hedden says. "People are capable of rational thought and in turn can be in control of their own communities."


Eastside roots: Kuller and Hedden say they sought to avoid a life defined by SUVs and lattes. The teens immersed themselves in study and relied on the international press for U.S. news, which, they say, is less biased. They read lots of books, including some by Noam Chomsky. "We learned that society must start thinking beyond today's immediate needs," Kuller said.


The future: Mourning Commute says it's determined to make change. The group promoted its latest event, a teach-in featuring Seattle activist Bert Sacks, standing in the rain in front of supermarkets. Members say they have been spat on more often than congratulated. "The Eastside is not an altogether friendly place for activism," Kuller said. "That's why we want to confront the issues here, so people can look at themselves and how they align with the rest of the world."


— Leslie Fulbright


  
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