Weblog
22/04: workshops at the new york book fair
i only got a chance to go to two workshops (tabling only happened on saturday, but workshops were held both saturday and sunday). there were some doozies (at least in title) - "being a girl in activist boy club" (really wish that i had made it to that one), "the importance of community needs assessment in activist work," "safety and accountability in activist spaces"... etc. since one of my main peeves right now is the whole illusion/question of safety, my presence at that last one would have been particularly confrontational. but i had to go to the airport (leaving some extra time to get lost on the subway again).
there were three different workshops on the idea of working with non anarchists. the only one that was appropriately named (to my jaded eye) was the one called
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18/04: the second new york anarchist (ahem) book fair
so i went to new york. a whirlwind trip (left friday and came back sunday night). on the way there (after waiting for three hours in the airport 'cause the weather was scary in new york) i watched hours of the dog whisperer - a hideously named tv show about a guy who might actually be pretty cool. (i was trying to get tips about a friend who sporadically decides that perfectly nice people need to be nipped.)
but anyway. perhaps a show about body language and clear boundaries put me in a good mood for tabling and being social. for whatever reason, i had a very nice time staffing the lbc table, despite mini disasters (like
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25/12: an interesting (although not anarchist) website
i stumbled across this website
http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/
and it reminded me of all the stuff that i found fascinating about urban planning and architecture and of course the sits said it, and it's too bad that mostly the conversations i have about this topic are along the lines of debating whether atr the banks will be converted into housing, or if they have to be torn down because their structures are inherently authoritarian...
which sort of conversation is fun but constrained.
paying attention to how our built environments are affecting us can be a depressing game--since it generally tends to noticing how much worse things are getting (or could get), but considering how we would do things differently, and/or how we can change things in our own inspired ways, can only be helped by learning from sites like these.
one of the entries is about
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08/11: Roads, Empty and Busy - RAT part 2
My workshop was on anarchy, women, and identity. Besides the fact that it seemed to blend smoothly into a variety of other workshops that sounded like they were identity-friendly (a bunch of muslim/islam workshops, one on mental illness, two indian ones), it was also disappointing because the conversation never got very deep.
I had been imagining that there would be an audience of sophisticated people who had thought about this issue already, and what there was instead were people who wanted to talk about how much the men were talking.
If I had planned for that crowd, I could have created a more interesting conversation and pushed people to go deeper more than I did. I realize that my description of the workshop didn't pull in the people I was most hoping to show up (except for one, who mixed people up by talking about desire and masturbation - yay!).
This is one of the contradictory things about this conference, which is that the participants range
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05/11: the once a year show
i appreciate the RAT very much, with all its attendant frustrations (mostly along the lines of too many activists), and the fact that i actually travel across this insanely huge continent to go to it (meaning that i have to put up with being locked into big traveling cans, with screaming children and plastic people and unhappy workers offering me synthetic substances while pretending to be robots - i could go on) is an indication of how much i really do think it is a valuable thing.
so if i sound too cranky in the following post, put it down to my slow recovery rate.
this year i was not only doing my own workshop, which ended up being disappointing (i take full responsibility for this - more on that in a later post, i think, as well as reports on the other workshops i attended), but was also asked to be on a panel about green capitalism and how to re-invigorate the eco-anarchist movement.
you may ask "why would you allow yourself to engage in a panel when the introductory terms already make your blood vessels pop?" to which i can only respond that
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04/09: anarchy (magazine) and capitalism
i know it will sound disingenuous, but it's frustrating to have people focus so much on the AK part of issue 64 (a la libcom and infoshop threads), although of course putting the bob black review online makes that focus somewhat inevitable.AK is relevant because it is symptomatic of a lot of assumptions that people aren't generally explicit about. like what sustainable means, and what a real anarchist struggle is (if one believes that workers are the base of a real anarchist change, then AK's position makes more sense than if one believes that resisting work is a more anarchist perspective), etc.
i am hoping that this issue of ajoda is only the first part of a more critical discussion about how we interact with capitalism. and i wish
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05/07: drugs and anarchy
i have been thinking for years (off and on) about drug use, and how it exists in us culture.
this thinking has only been made more complex by spending more time with vegans and straight edgers.
having worked a lot with alcoholics (as i did from a fairly early age) means that i am heavily suspicious of drinking. not liking superficial talk (hard to know if this is cause or effect) means that i don't have a good time in most of the scenes where people are drinking.
but so many people bond with each other around ingesting alcohol that i know i have given up something significant by refusing to go there. (i say this with full awareness about the usual shallowness of those bonds.)
at the same time i consider changes of perspective to be helpful, and drugs as a much more amorphous category than the way that most people think of them, and i disagree with the categorization of substances into rigid groups along the lines of food vs. drug vs. medicine vs. useless vs. poison vs. fun.
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26/05: another shout out - adam curtis
adam curtis has produced multiple documentaries for the bbc: pandora's box (about science), the mayfair set (about the ruling class in britain), the power of nightmares, and century of the self.
the first one i saw was the power of nightmares trilogy, which explored the way that politicians' rhetoric and goals have changed from pursuing ideological goals to managing and stimulating fear, through following the reciprocal rise of the neocon movement in the west and the fundamentalist muslim movement in the middle east. this series was exciting and different enough to make sure that i searched out everything that curtis has ever produced.
the second set i saw was the century of the self, a quartet about the effect of freud on the world - mostly through the efforts of freud's nephew, who lived in america and almost single-handedly created the field of public relations. that might sound somewhat innocuous, but in fact, it has created (was part of) a huge shift in how people think about themselves and relate to consumption. this series is the one most referenced in the anarchist study group. (it usually comes up in reference to the public relations triumph of encouraging people to express their individuality through the things that they buy. we are of course dealing with the consequences of that every minute of every day.)
he has a new series out now, called the trap, about how,
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26/03: anarchy and criticism
so i made a lot of mistakes in the past month.several little ones, things that could've been caught by proofreaders, or other editors, but weren't.
the latest big one was from confusion about how the bar code works on the magazine. so once again, we have to get stickers made - which is money that we just don't have.
and, just like last time, this time i think i finally understand enough now to get it right from now on. but it's a learning process - again, part of the deal of taking on a project that is made up of pieces that none of us have ever done before. no matter how many times i think to ask for advice (not my strongest suit), there is always some question
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05/03: 8 days of anarchy--the quiet parts
fun anarchy-themed events for 8 days in march. (8daysofanarchy.org)
so much work to do, and the kind of work that is pretty invisible. designing pages, making lists of historical events, researching, marking up maps, editing, waiting for people to get back to me, remembering all the pieces of what i'm doing, remembering when to remind people of stuff, learning (always) about marketing, and trying to take what is relevant from marketing while leaving the rest.
but aside from one meeting place that i haven't found yet (makes sense that finding space in the bay area is particularly hard), it's pretty much all done. and there's this lull before the storm feeling... i've battened the hatches and put up the storm sail, next thing to happen will be all kinds of people coming in from out of town, the events actually happening (with all the last minute maneuvering that takes), and then the aftermath.
but really what i'm thinking about is the idea that so much of this work is about setting context.
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