Journal of Radical Shimming Issue 9

I Three Part Path: A brief X Punk Politics? Or lack guide to making a pilgrimage for the thereof? A Punk House is only a purpose of reforming your relation- Pedagogical Beginning ship to the landscape P. 89 Cassie Troyan P. 0, 17 Mike Wolf XI An Introduction to the II Feral Children, Civilized Introduction to “After the Fall” Gaze: Adapting to the Wild Mirror P. 93 Gabriel Saloman P. 24 Robin Hustle XII Introduction to After III Cascadia Journal 1907, the Fall 1912 (from F I L M) P. 95 P. 1, 29 Ola Ståhl1 XIII January 7, 2010 in Reggie’s Journal of Radical Shimming 9 IV Vedem House Soul Food Restaurant in P. 37 Matthew Stadler Detroit, Michigan P. 108 V Dear Laura, P. 2, 43 Dan S. Wang XIV LIVING FOR CHANGE: Re-Imagining America, Re-Creating VI Flatlands: Non-Hierarchical Ourselves Space and its Uses P. 4, 113 Grace Lee Boggs P. 3, 52 Sam Gould XV First Encounter at the VII Introduction to Boggs Center “MYSTERY ECOLOGY” (2009) P. 115 Dan S. Wang P. 75 Gabriel Saloman XVI Half of a quick report-back VIII Introduction to “Media- from the January 7 Boggs Center tion, Self-Marginalization and Post meeting Politics in Protest Media” (2009) P. 117 Mike Wolf P. 78 Robby Herbst XVII Varieties of Craft, IX A Conversation between Smoothness, Alchemical Pedagogy Sam Gould, Gabriel Saloman and P. 4, 119 Dylan Gauthier Robby Herbst concerning the You- Tube School for Social Politics XVIII Late night talkback assess- P. 80 ing A/AA and educational staging as a Politics over homemade Ginger Tea, Vancouver, B.C. Canada P. 6, 129 I

Pull the pages you need out of the book and keep them in a plastic bag to protect them from rain and sweat and wear. Borrow or purchase a simple compass.

P. 19 III

When we arrived in Oregon they made note of our names. / a note were made of our names and there was a chef and he took us into an old railway carriage and pointed at two sleeping berths. / When we arrived in Oregon they made note of our names and there was a chef and he took us into an old railway carriage and pointed at two sleeping berths we would dispose over. /

P. 31 V VI

Having been provided an ex- posure to this experimental method, I and many of Paul’s students adopted a particular kind of activist mode: histori- cally-informed, thesis-positing, continually self-educating, and taking action in the world.

P. 48

In re-telling the above histories in brief, and framing them specifically within a context of, not simply education, but pedagogy, my desire is to promote a view of education that is plural and positively haphazard.

P. 59 XIV

It never occurred to me that eventually my identity would be shaped not mainly by my ethnicity, class or gender but by how I responded to the challenge to rebuild, redefine and respirit Detroit from the ground up.

P. 114

XVII

Craft is finely interwoven with luxury, as a craftsper- son’s time is costly. But when boats are not built for luxury, they are built of necessity. A boat should be a way of traveling across water surfaces while staying mostly dry. We wanted each boat to be rapidly re- producible by anyone. The conceptual plan emerged long before the initial construction phases but became enmeshed with it as well. I had also been thinking initially about tides and flood-lines left on houses in New Orleans, and it was easy to project in what we were doing some kind of eco-apocalyptic remediation project, some kind of Ark or escape hatch.

P. 125 XVIII JRS Issue 9 9

• winter as the sun began to set early in grey New York. Tomorrow would be Has Anyone Seen Monday, the beginning of the school week. In Louis’s cracker nightmare the Bridge? I sensed he had been experiencing something similar to this dread I was An Introduction to JRS 9 remembering—a desperate feeling, an attempt to grasp something out Not too long ago, a few weeks before of reach that couldn’t quite be un- my twin girls were born, my son woke derstood, but something that felt so up in bed with a start. He kept repeat- so important that the very thought ing the same word, over and over. At of not being able to get to it in the first I couldn’t quite make out what it end made you feel alone, vulner- was that he was saying. Concerned, able, open to any and all levels of at- I tried to comfort him, running my tack. Crackers indeed. As I thought hand through his hair, telling him about what Louis might have been everything was fine. I attempted to experiencing, and I pursued this line decipher what it was that was upset- of thinking further, I was reminded ting him so much that it woke him, in of one incident in particular that I shock, at three in the morning. As the hadn’t considered in years. situation began to calm somewhat, Louis’s voice began to even out and Ms. Dixon was my sixth grade sci- I heard clearly for the first time what ence teacher and she was an asshole. was making him so anxious. Over Or at least that’s what I felt at the and over again he cried out, to no one time. To me she seemed a wild mix of in particular, “Crackers! Crackers! emotions, at turns kind and toughly Crackers!” Though he was obviously caring, while equally spiteful, and very upset, I couldn’t help but find it purposefully cruel. Almost twenty hilarious that my son was so uncon- years in the past my memory of my sciously concerned with crackers. Did time in her class is, of course, hazy. he desire them that much? Did he What I do recall is that, while try- find himself being attacked by spec- ing as best I could to get through the tral crackers in the night? work she assigned, I did horribly in every respect no matter how hard I The following morning, after drop- tried. Never all too comfortable in ping him off at school I was relaying school, when feeling out of place, this story to a friend. In its retelling hemmed in by the limitations of vari- a feeling came over me, a feeling I ous teaching methods and my own hadn’t felt that severely since child- process of learning, I would be com- hood. A palpable emptiness, coupled bative. I’d fight the situation at hand, with sincere fright, this feeling often uncertain and afraid because I didn’t I have to say it broke my heart to leave the structure, the thing. But when it comes down to it, Columbus consumed when I was young, late know the answers. Or so it seemed. doesn’t need another physical space for activity, it needs a different kind of activity to create within existing on Sunday afternoons, especially in That said, while I may have enacted spaces. I’d say that about the earth, in general, at this moment.

P. 134 10 Introduction JRS Issue 9 11 any number of feats of subterfuge, morning will come and the crackers aim, an engagement with disparate published in Issue #2 of the JRS as shrinking from confrontation was will, or will not, still be there. Take it and anarchic forms of learning on part of our project Learning is Fun not one of them. That is, until Ms. as it is and work your way through it”. all levels, as well as an examination and Dangerous which took place Dixon. As the pressure of her class The bridge will always be crumbling of the more dominant forms that we over a weeks time at Reed College. and her aggressive teaching methods behind us. The job, on our part, is to encounter throughout our day-to- Released in the spring of 2007, this increased, and her distrust and com- consider if that is a threat or a gift. day lives. issue was broken up into many indi- plete lack of empathy for my just not vidual zines, which were then pack- getting it continued, I grew more and If we’ll agree that the framework Within this, Issue #9 of the JRS, these aged in full as one whole edition. more introverted and afraid. My anx- we’ve established for our grade inquiries come in the form of, among Issue #2 was our smallest print-run to iety grew. It got so bad that I couldn’t school’s, our high school’s, our col- others, a consideration of non-hierar- date, at somewhere around 200 cop- go to school. I wasn’t skipping out lege’s—our mass-culture learning chical educational sites, a pilgrimage ies of complete editions. I don’t think and fooling my folks or the school institutions in general—are there as through the landscape and its uses, I even have a complete edition of this in the process, I couldn’t even bring much to help us navigate the world YouTube as an anarchic pan-demo- issue. In light of how extraordinary myself to leave the house. outside of those spaces and their in- cratic educational space, boat build- the story of the boys of Home One herent social dynamics, as they are ing as a pedagogical construct for the and the magazine Vedem is, we felt it I’ve had my fair share of anxiety- there to assist us in accessing discrete consideration of singular craft over vital to reprint this text in book form ridden situations in my life, just like forms of knowledge, what does it say mass-production, a brief overview for it to gain a wider and more last- everyone else. And just like every- that my anxiety in seventh grade sci- of the modern history of the educa- ing readership than it first received in one else I’ve forgotten most of them, ence with Ms. Dixon is so blandly tion of feral children, as well as an Issue #2. they’ve passed and now seem inci- common place? I am not the first and assessment of Grace Lee Boggs. Also dental to each experience as a whole. will not be the last to have those pain- we have included two re-prints from It should be noted that this issue has But this feeling, if not the particular ful pedestrian experiences. As well, issues past that we felt were impera- taken shape in the interim between experience in question, has stuck. It’s what are we to think in regard to the tive to highlight once more. First is two initiatives facilitated by Red76; the overwhelming feeling of having myth that school—and hence those a letter, written by Dan S. Wang to Revolutionary Spirit (2007–2009), no options, like slowly walking over a experiences, those social dynamics— Laura Baldwin in the aftermath of and Flying University. The JRS began bridge towards a fog in the distance, are finite, that they will end? Not only the death of Paul Wellstone. While as the print-arm of Revolutionary the structure of the bridge behind you is it an unconscious lie about how the we first published this letter only Spirit, and for a time after that proj- breaking off, crumbling as you go, at world works, it is an inadvertent an- a few issues back, we felt it was not ect came to an end we had to consider your own pace, your own making. I nexation of critical thinking from only a natural fit for this issue, but if the publication would continue on was able to be there for Louis when our day-to-day lives. If school/social we also considered the text some- in its place. Something told us, after he woke from his bad dream. I was anxiety ends when we graduate then thing like an illustration, a moment a time, that it was the right thing to able to comfort him, and tell him that equally so our engagement with dis- in time, captured to paint a picture do. And, we should admit, we loved it was three in the morning and that parate means of engaging discrete of experience. Rather than a discrete it too much to abandon it. crackers could wait. My anxiety in knowledge/social dynamics come text, Dan’s letter serves to draw into seventh grade science was just as ab- to an end by the same unconscious focus many other aspects of politics We did produce one issue since then, surd, really. But at the time it did seem logic. In brief; after you graduate, it and education discussed within this a zine; Issue #8. A small, photocopied like it was engulfing my existence just suggests that you stop thinking and issue. Consider it a composition in all edition, it served as something of a like Louis’s dream had engulfed his. start working. That’s it. its varied forms. Second, we have de- natural bridge between those two The difference being, in the situation cided to re-print Matthew Stadler’s projects. This current issue is the true we’ve constructed for ourselves, in This issue of the JRS hopes to con- overview of Vedem, the maga- beginning of a new set of questions, regard to schooling, there’s no one front those specific feelings about zine of the children of Home One, while not discarding any of our past there to tell you the crackers can wait, schooling and education, as well as Theresienstadt—the Nazi concentra- concerns. Over the past year we have no one to say, “don’t worry about it, a number of other intangibles. Its tion camp. This text was originally been engaging a number of discrete 12 Introduction JRS Issue 9 13 projects under the banner of Flying and embodiments which recede into work, and play, family, life in general. at the world as a series of learning sit- University. Our desire with this initia- the horizon. They serve as space for Yet the majority of our day-to-day uations, public learning such as this tive is to both engage specific topics consideration. They exist throughout experience is filled with our gleaning enacts a form of meditative practice, of inquiry that interest and concern our lives. They serve as sites for ques- information which we then filter and allowing the practitioner/student/ us, as well as, through the applica- tioning that allow us to consider how process for use and benefit, both per- teacher to view the world through tion of each discrete project (for ex- we want to live our lives and what we sonal, as well as collective. We gather a new, ever mindful, frame. The ac- ample; Pop-Up Book Academy, the want to see in our futures. So, first information. We learn through ob- cumulated creation of spaces such as YouTube School for Social Politics, things first, let’s venture into the fog, servation and dialogue, each and ev- these, devoted to education, flatten Anywhere/Anyplace Academy [A/ look behind us, and ask ourselves, eryday. Our lives are devoted to cre- the fields of power that single-tiered AA], and a number of others) en- “where is that confounded bridge?” ating informal systems of knowledge educational environments reside gage, apply, and consider how and gathering, be that learning about our within. That space creation breaks where we learn. In a variety of loca- Sincerely, friend’s habits and quirks, or our down hierarchies and, with the in- tions we have activated many of these Sam Gould favorite type of music, literature, or sertion of multiple subjects as hand projects over the past year. In the fall film genre, food, or sexual activity. housed within the context of learning of 2009 we created a campus, of sorts, March 18th 2010 In this regard we are all students, as you find the formation of a pedagogi- for them under the banner of Surplus well as teachers, available to learn cal politics not of doctrine but deed. Seminar. If Flying University is about (the 66th birthday of Margaret Casey as well as share in tandem with our the means and location of education, Gould; who is, among many other friends and neighbors. How would 2. then Surplus Seminar concerns itself attributes, the loving Grandmother our lives differ were we to view them with the question of the use, creation, of eight wonderful people.) through a lens of continuing and As an ad-hoc educational experi- and reapplication and contextualiza- evolving education, as individuals, as ment, Flying University is a model. tion of knowledge and knowledge well as the collective whole? Where is It is there to be plucked, prodded, systems. This issue came out of the Notes: the classroom in this environment? torn, and reassembled by our selves, daily activity engendered through Flying University Flying University suggests that the and others. Simultaneously it de- Surplus Seminar in its first iteration world around us is filled with a va- sires to serve as a plausible model in Columbus, Ohio in the fall of 2009. Considering New Classrooms, riety of situations—along with our for self-started micro-economies. New Economies, New more obvious educational spaces— Transparent, it is ready to provide a Our desire for this issue, truthfully, is Collective Environments: wherein pedagogical environments reference for those who wish to live not to rail against dominant forms of can manifest themselves; appearing their lives more mindfully regarding education. It just doesn’t seem use- 1. and disappearing through the inter- their relationship to capital. At a time ful. Our desire, instead, is to discuss est and enthusiasm of those partici- when the global economy is hemor- how those forms can be infiltrated, Often the setting of the college, the pating, confident in the import of rhaging, Flying University aims to sublimated, and adopted not as op- university, the high school or pri- the act of manifesting these environ- resist a hackneyed urge towards so- positional forces, but counterparts to mary school is where we house our ments. Kitchen tables, barrooms, city cioeconomic rhetoric, instead consid- more discrete, ad-hoc, self-initiated notions of learning sites. And right- parks, beds, train cars and numerous ering how, why, and where we spend educational ventures. Why should fully so as our most prevalent and other forms of transportation, laun- our money, and positing ideas for any of us be interested? Because in in-depth educational experiences— dromats, hot dogs carts, bridges, and cyclical economies and gray markets. looking at these structures in this way experiences wherein we have had the hotel rooms all make for dynamic As cultural workers, as well as law- we can begin to view education not time and the opportunity to devote and thought provoking educational yers, doctors, newspaper salesmen, as a means to get a leg up, not as a ourselves to rigorous research—have environments which can exist in par- army personal, and farmers, we make requirement to quickly exit out of, often, outwardly, occurred within the allel to the world around them. Able a living and, when feasible, spend our but as a flat plane, a series of engage- walls of these types of institutions. to provide a glimpse into the possibil- excess funds on that which we desire. ments that take on innumerable faces The world outside The School is for ities of living a life devoted to looking In the case of Flying University the 14 Introduction JRS Issue 9 15 question is asked, “what if instead of prior, and the shape before that, into limited to a single, one-time-only use, Pop-Up Book Academy, or the consuming with those funds, the aim the future, to be reshaped again, limited to a single purpose or func- YouTube School for Social Politics. is to produce and regenerate revenue collectively. tion and none else, we are bound Anywhere/Anyplace Academy (A/ streams?” and beholden to others, forced to AA) acts as the hub for activities for - - - - consume in excess rather than create the entirety of Surplus Seminar. The Flying University is initially funded Surplus Seminar from the world around us. Similarly, construction of each A/AA during a through its association with its prac- when acculturated to believe that for run of Surplus Seminar is a pedagogi- titioners main source of personal We throw everything away. Plates, one reason or another our thoughts cal exercise. The use of surplus goods income; museums and other arts cups, cell phones, bottles, bags, and concerns are somehow limited, and their implementation, in this spaces, as well as academic institu- clothing; items which could easily or lesser than, those of others, when way, acts as a foil for the possibilities tions. These funds go to the general be reused, recycled, or repurposed. our ideas are regimented towards of looking at our own thoughts and operating cost of the project which, Arguably, as a result, we are condi- set ends and means, we are intrinsi- skills in much the same fashion. in turn, is supplemented through the tioned to consider our own thoughts, cally put at a disadvantage intellec- adoption of various existing econom- ideas, and concerns—even our re- tually, and in turn, politically. The A construction site as classroom, A/ ic models, parasitically available for lationships—just as disposable. We repurposing of ideas, the expanding AA exists through the shared skills, either’s benefit. For example: school drop concepts for other newer pret- and agitation of them, much like the know-how, and collaboration of as speakeasy, traveling used book- tier ones before the original has a repurposing of more tangible physi- each person who chooses to help store as university in a suitcase, semi- chance to take hold and flourish, cal materials, is infectious and gener- construct it. Taking different forms nar as restaurant. becoming something new and sepa- ative. Like the many-headed Hydra, a depending on the location in which rate from our initial intentions, and good idea set free, fractured from its it is built a A/AA schoolhouse is 3. stronger for it. Surplus goods and origins, spawns another, and another constructed through the utilization surplus knowledge can be viewed not still. of excess, cast-off materials from the Education, economies, space. As only as cultural poles in a disposable area wherein that manifestation of stated earlier, the formation of free- society, but as a metaphorical spring- Surplus Seminar is a means to agitate Surplus Seminar takes place. In this zones, wherein new sets of rules are board for the possibilities inherent and activate the ideas that reside all regard each A/AA bears the visual adopted, new possibilities formulat- within all of us. In an increasingly around us, a move towards creating markings of its area, its economy, and ed, in tandem with a desire towards invisible society we are each a con- a space to dream up the myriad pos- its residents skill-sets and interests. the investigation of education and sumer, creator, and clearing house for sibilities inherent in the repurposing A A/AA schoolhouse in Columbus, economies, elicits a parallel politics knowledge, just as much as we are the of knowledge. Surplus Seminar acti- Ohio may predominantly be con- within reach. Flying University re- receivers, producers, and disposers of vates a series of events often taking structed through the retro-fitting of gards these three poles as hubs for material goods. the form of ad-hoc schools interested a disused shipping container, while a a new reality. A machine you step in the investigation of surplus knowl- school in Portland, Oregon may, for into. A vehicle which ferries you to a In this knowledge based, often star- edge as a mirror image of surplus instance, resemble an early twentieth place very much like your own, but tlingly ephemeral, consumer culture material: ideas which exist all around century single room school, its pri- one clearer, finer tuned, convivial, the realization and management of and within us yet often find them- mary building material a torn-down equitable, filled with tools to solve our ideas and concerns manifests selves going under-utilized, to the barn constructed from old growth problems, instead of tools to destroy as political will. All too often this detriment of the whole. timber. No matter the structure, or them. A tool for the realization that strength goes dangerously under- the materials with which it was built, problems cannot be destroyed, be- utilized. Collectively we all benefit For each iteration of Surplus all manifestations of A/AA promote cause they do not exist. Problems from a cyclical economy of knowl- Seminar a number of school’s, which active thinking, improvisation, and are not physical, but ethereal, there edge, economically, as well as socially utilize in one form or another the no- collaborative action, creating an an- to be molded, tweaked, retrofitted to and politically. When we are told that tion of surplus within their operating archic center for generative thought. a new state, different from the shape the material goods we consume are strategy, are activated, for instance; A/AA promotes the notion that 16 Introduction JRS Issue 9 17 learning and knowledge exists all I travel, that speed born of extractive around us, like surplus goods looking colonialism. Walking in this way pos- to be retrofitted and utilized rather Three Part Path: es physical challenges, forcing me to than seen as trash, useless, a forgot- appreciate the vulnerability as well as ten commodity, ready to be thrown in A brief guide the strength of my own body. The ex- the dump. periences have left indelible marks on to making a my consciousness. But it would work In our unstable and ephemeral econ- better if you made a pilgrimage like omy ideas alone increasingly serve pilgrimage for this too. as the major bedrock for monetary growth and future zones of social and the purpose of It seems to me that this pilgrimage political capital. Very easily—and must be possible anywhere in the extremely aggressively—these zones reforming your world, but my particular experience can become marginalized, compart- is of doing it in the so-called Mid- mentalized to continue an economic relationship to western United States, a region of- system built upon class division. The ten understood only through vague, collective activation and inventive the landscape misleading stereotypes. Too seldom re-use of ideas, therefore, becomes do people attempt to learn about the politically necessary as almost never Mike Wolf varied political and social histories before. Open thought, the sharing of Summer of the Earth Ox, 2009 for themselves, or ask the different, skills and knowledge, and the gen- radically changing groups of people erative growth which develops from The sustenance and life we call ours who live there what life is like. A those activities, encourages a hori- are born out of the land by one an- guide to traveling under more ex- zontal system of benefit, while simul- other. Our culture consists of our re- treme climatic or social conditions taneously providing a space available lationship to the landscape. would require knowledge that I don’t to us all for inclusive learning and The landscape is always people too. have. Indeed you may find numerous expansive new possibilities for what other assumptions and short comings tomorrow can be. Surplus Seminar Though once might have been built into the text. These are simply acts as a construction site tinkering enough, I’ve taken two pilgrim- reasons why more people need to with what that future can look like ages—two long walks of about one- embark on this journey. It is a way of through the shared, expansive (re) hundred and fifty miles—with the practicing the bravery, humility, per- utilization of ideas. idea that carrying my own body severance, humor, and foolishness we through the landscape in this self- need as we remake the world. determined, self-powered manner would alter my understanding of the The pilgrimage unfolds in three sim- landscape. Walking this distance ex- ple parts, like a song: verse, corse, posed me to a wide spectrum of dif- verse. In the first verse you mostly ferent horizons, transitions between listen, to research, training, the bless- urban and rural areas, various small ings of supporters. Then, of corse, you towns, industries, people, watersheds walk. And finally the second verse is and geologies. Traveling on foot has when you sing. You report back to begun to erode the general feeling of your supporters and friends—which entitlement I had toward automobile might now include people met along 18 Three Part Path… JRS Issue 9 19 the way—about your experiences, the supportive. Sometimes that emotion- There are three general categories to give you an idea of time and dis- people and places that you witnessed, al support manifests itself in physical of places you are putting together: tance, both pilgrimages I did were and what is happening to you. ways, for example when people lend 1) places of historical significance, about ten days long, with nine days you equipment for your walk. whether they are officially recognized of walking and one day of resting. I The First Verse or, better yet, hidden, marginalized walked between twelve and twenty Walking 150 miles can be grueling. Alone and not alone histories, 2) places where people live miles a day. If you need more time, If you are not already a walker you I have made this pilgrimage both with and work that are normally invisible take it. One reason to have a general need to become one before you go on a partner and alone. Both offer their to you and, 3) places that are just route planned is to have some idea of this pilgrimage. Work your way up own advantages and possibilities for personally meaningful to you, or that where you will sleep along the way. to taking at least a couple fifteen to powerful experiences. For some peo- you are curious about. Obviously twenty mile walks, carrying a part of ple walking alone will just not seem there can be a lot of overlap between Sleeping the load that you expect to carry on like an option, due to safety concerns. these categories. Plot a few points on Sometimes it will seem like all you your pilgrimage. Walk at least a few I don’t want to be euphemistic about the map and try to make a route that are doing is struggling to get to the hours a week in the months before this, people of color and women will connects some of them. next place where you can sleep. There you head out. The more you prepare, have very reasonable concerns when are several possibilities. If friends and presumably, the less grueling it will it comes to traveling in areas outside DeLorme makes a Gazetteer for each family live along your route, that is be. If you have a job, do your com- of their day to day habitat, and may state and province, a book mapping wonderful. Ask your friends if they mute on foot. If it is too far, just walk feel particularly vulnerable. Travel- every road (they are about $20 and know folks along your route. It is not part way. Careful though. You might ing with another person will open up not hard to find). Your typical high- common in my experience to find become addicted to walking and se- different possibilities for who you can way map will not have this level of strangers who are willing to put you verely reduce your need for public connect with. If you do not already detail. Pull the pages you need out of up, but everyone will have different transportation and cars. As well as have some knowledge of it, on this the book and keep them in a plastic abilities to connect with strangers building your walkin’ muscles, you pilgrimage you will learn more about bag to protect them from rain and and different levels of comfort with will learn useful things like what your capacities and talents for deal- sweat and wear. Borrow or purchase doing so. For this pilgrimage, for shoes and socks work well, how not ing with strangers. Rest assured that a simple compass. This will help now, when there is no one to put you to be alarmed by the minor pains in no matter who you are, at times you you when you have totally lost your up, campgrounds and motels work your body, what it’s like to walk in will feel very vulnerable. Even if you sense of direction. Take these on your wonderfully. You will need to budget places you’ve never walked before, are walking with other people you training walks and become familiar some money for this. In the Midwest, and what part of the road feels best could have the experience of walking with them. Getting lost or confused you can expect to pay between $35 to walk on… alone by taking separate routes and is not that big of a deal. This is not and $80 a night. Some negotiation is meeting up periodically to check in. a remote wilderness trek. You will possible on slow nights and the fur- Since the walk can be difficult it will Presumably though, walking with a never be more than a few uncomfort- ther you are from the interstate the be helpful to form some foundation partner or a group means working able hours from help in the unlikely better the bargain. Camping is much of psychological and emotional sup- with them early in the first verse to circumstance that something goes cheaper. Not all towns have places port. Once you decide to make this plan a route collaboratively. wrong. Paper maps are better than for people to stay. Obviously if you pilgrimage bring the news to people GPS, if only because they don’t re- are going to camp you’ll need at least who you trust, loved ones, friends, Path planning and quire batteries. Literacy with the some kind of bed roll. Which brings maybe family. It might take them navigation landscape (people too) is more useful us to packing. some time to warm up to the strange Many pilgrimage traditions follow than maps and other technological idea, but any validation you receive a set route or bring the devoted to a geegaws. Packing will help you along the way. It is im- particular place with spiritual signifi- Obviously the less you pack the less portant to block out and resist in- cance. This pilgrimage route is to be de- No matter how much you plan there you have to carry. When I walked ternalizing those voices that are not termined by those making the journey. will be plenty of improvisation. But these pilgrimages I used a large 20 Three Part Path… JRS Issue 9 21 backpack such as is used by people Leaves and corn cobs work beauti- Another option is to forage for food. the landscape entirely to erode the making wilderness hikes. I think I car- fully for wiping your butt too. But This takes some knowledge and you distinctions between rural and ur- ried no more than thirty pounds at some plant matter, like poison ivy, always have to consider whether what ban areas. In other words, a pilgrim- any given time. It was too much. The work very badly. Kick a little divot you find has been sprayed with pesti- age of this sort has the potential to twenty pound range would be better. in the ground and aim for that. Put cides or other toxins. But depending change how we connect with our cul- Certainly there are people wandering your leaves or TP in there too and on the season you might be able to ture. Go walk. the country side who are comfort- cover your shit. Think of it as making find edible greens, fruit, and berries. able carrying almost nothing but the a mini-compost pile and say thank *I gratefully acknowledge Bonnie clothes they’re wearing. See the side- you to the micro-organisms for tak- The Second Verse Fortune, who was my collaborator bar for my suggested packing list. ing care of that for you. Cleaning and returning the items you and fellow pilgrim, brave, strong, borrowed is one easy way to begin and intelligent, on the first of these When it comes to learning about Drinking and Eating the process of reporting back. But two journeys. equipment like tents, sleeping bags, Dehydration and heat stroke, even the creative and celebratory quali- tarps, rain-gear, packs, and all that on relatively mild days, are the great- ties of this pilgrimage come out most Coupla notes: Big thanks Dan S. nerdy crap, I highly recommend est real danger you face. But avoiding when you report back to the people Wang and Rebecca Zorach for their Colin Fletcher’s The Complete these are easy by taking in lots and lots who supported you. Before you leave editorial input and labor on this Walker. Though it is geared toward of water. Carry a couple of water bot- and as you are traveling, consider guide when it was first published in wilderness hiking, it also has appli- tles of at least one liter and fill them how to share your experiences. Just Issue Nine of AREA Chicago. And, cable information about footwear, up whenever you have the opportuni- like the route, the way you share the I am quite serious that I would like clothing, first-aid, and safety. ty. Water is free, don’t buy water. Use experience is specific to you. If you you to take this walk. I have a rela- drinking fountains, bathrooms, public are a graphic artist you might want tive wealth of experience traveling in Bathing, Shitting, spigots, and pumps. You can also ask to make a poster or a zine about your the Midwest. I would be glad to give and Pissing people if you can fill your bottle with journey. You might want to perform personal guidance and am also open You will probably be stinky even if their hose. It is not unreasonable to be a travelogue for one or more small to other questions and kind criti- you manage to bathe everyday day. refilling your bottles twice a day, and groups, maybe start with people you cisms Please contact me: mistywoof@ Bring a little bar of soap, maybe a more on hot days. know and try it again for a larger au- gmail.com or 773-368-5875 bit of shampoo, toothpaste and all dience. Public libraries, park build- that. A small towel can be nice but Though you will carry some food, ings, community centers, churches, is not essential. A hand towel is fine, I like to eat in a diner or restaurant or experimental art spaces often of- Suggestions for no need to bring your over-sized, once a day to add variety to the fer up space for events like this. You Meeting your Basic Martha Stewart bath towel. non-refrigerated energy food in my might even want to contact one of Pilgrimage Needs feedbag. You don’t need to carry these places before you leave to start When it comes to shitting and pissing ten days worth of grazing food and planning an event. You could also (see next page) take advantage of toilets along the trail treats, but you do need to keep make an audio presentation to dis- way. But if you are drinking enough your eyes peeled for grocery stores tribute digitally and send to a local water you’ll have to piss outside and take advantage when you find community radio station. It might pretty regularly. Just be polite about a good one. If you get frustrated by take a few weeks or a couple months it, try not to expose yourself to traf- the lack of healthy, fresh food in your or longer to fully report your experi- fic or piss on other people’s stuff. city neighborhood, know that it can ence, and it can take multiple forms. The occasion might arise that you’ll be just as hard or worse in rural ar- These reports will form the body of have to shit in a corn field or along eas, where people sometimes need to knowledge about this pilgrimage. the roadside. For this you might want drive thirty miles to shop for food. But beyond that there is the poten- have a bit of toilet paper with you. tial to alter our understanding of 22 Three Part Path… JRS Issue 9 23

Suggestions for Places to sleep: Miscellaneous useful extras: • candy Meeting your Basic • homes of friends, family, and • contractor garbage bags to • salty treats Pilgrimage Needs maybe strangers line backpack • water augmentation • campgrounds ($12 to $25 per • plastic grocery and zipper bags (emergen-c, kool-aid, etc…) Possible places to connect: night) • bandana • migrant worker encampments • motels ($35 to $80 per night) • nylon cord Useful references: • intentional communities where else? • duct tape • The Complete Walker • public housing projects • needle and thread Colin Fletcher • progressive farming What to wear: Though it is geared toward communities • light, blended fiber breathable Bed roll: wilderness hiking it has a ton • spiritual communities pants or skirt • tent or tarp (+ nylon cord, tent of applicable information • indian reservations • light breathable shirt stakes) about out door gear like tents, • small towns with strange • farmer hat (a full brim is • sleeping pad tarps, sleeping bags, packs, names better than a baseball hat) • sleeping bag and clothing. • powwows • trusty walking socks • Dwelling Portably • parks • trusty walking shoes Optional items: Microcosm Publishing • outsider art projects • sun block (oh, it’s all optional by the way) This impressive collection • the underground railroad • camera of D.I.Y. and hobo living festivals Items to Carry: • phone and charger solutions is fascinating and • historical pathways • 2 water bottles (at least 1 liter • 1/2 roll toilet paper useful. • monuments each) • swimmin’ trunks • Stalking the Wild Asparagus • burial sites • dry socks • small towel Euell Gibbons • desecrations • spare underwear This is a good (classic! • known or suspected sundown • knit hat for cold nights Items to leave home: introduction to wild foraging. towns • wool or polar fleece sweater • laptop • landfills • rain gear or extra heavyweight • books (except maybe gifts) • geoengineering experiments garbage bag • pot and other recreational • quarries • small flash light drugs • mines • small notebook and pen/cil • power plants • pocket knife Places to find food: • prisons • foot care stuff (mole skin, • diners and restaurants • abandoned industry blister pads, hand sanitizer— • grocery stores •CAFO’s refreshes and dries out the feet • foraging • military installations on breaks) • chemical refineries • maps and compass Feed bag: • waterways • gifts (zines, art, books, • fresh fruit •museums buttons, etc…) • nuts and seeds • giant fungi • post card stamps • dried fruit • historical societies • toothbrush and paste • hearty crackers • ancient trees • little bar of soap • bread • animal migration routes • meds • peanut butter • hard cheese • cookies 24 JRS Issue 9 JRS Issue 9 25

II potential to answer questions of what society, or who have been raised by slavery, missionaries, eugenics, and it means to be human—the signifi- animals, and not to children who subtler tools of racism ever since to Feral Children, cance of language, morality, family. have been systematically abused convince itself of superiority. The ap- But who this woman is, regard- and isolated, such as the well-known proach to feral children has differed Civilized Gaze: less of whether her DNA proves a Kaspar Hauser. Although there are from this primarily because so many match to Sal Lou and Rochom Soy, many parallels with the lives of these are themselves products of Western Adapting to the regardless of whether she learns children, particularly in the methods civilization. If these children can so to speak and can describe the last used to bring them back into soci- easily depart from civilization, any- Wild Mirror nineteen years of her life, is a ques- ety, the forces which kept them away one could, and the stability of civi- tion that will never be answered. She from that society are dissimilar. Chil- lization collapses. We need to prove Robin Hustle has already been transformed into a dren who have been abused should to ourselves that we can bring them February, 2007 symbol of humanity, as have dozens be given every possible opportunity back. of feral children before her. From for recovery—whether some meth- But in most cases, we cannot. Two sisters aged eight and six disap- Peter the Wild Boy, darling of the ods past and present actually give The few children who do learn to peared in 1988 while tending their English intellectual aristocracy of the them this opportunity is an impor- speak, eat cooked foods, and not steal family’s buffalo in Phnom Pehn, early 1700s to Kamala and Amala, tant question to ask, but not the sub- from the household cannot be said to Cambodia. On January 13, 2007 a the wolf-girls found in 1920 in India, ject of this article.] be rehabilitated as they never actual- naked young woman was seen clam- feral children have represented ter- When we attempt to bring feral ly reenter society on their own. And bering on all fours, foraging for food rifying and enlightening mirrors of children into civilization, what do what they lose of themselves cannot several miles from where the girls had our humanity and denied the right to we expect to see in them, learn from be regained, nor can the loss to all of gone missing and was captured by their own. Rather than allowing these them? Why is it so important to us to us of what we might otherwise learn villagers. Sal Lou, father of the miss- children to live in their known envi- teach them to speak, reason, and love? from them. The stories of feral chil- ing girls, traveled to see the found ronments, we capture them, attempt And why has our strategy changed so dren that follow should illuminate woman in hopes of her being one of to “civilize” them, run them through little through so many centuries, de- both our past failures and the poten- his lost daughters; he was immediate- rigorous tests, feed them foods their spite its consistent failure? Our des- tial for more meaningful experiences. ly convinced on seeing her, by a child- bodies are not adapted to, and force perate need to civilize these children Bernard Connor, private doctor hood scar on her right arm, that she them into unfulfilling, unhealthy, of- is a need to reaffirm our belief in civi- to the King of Poland, reported that is Rochom P’ngieng, the eldest. The ten short lives. This pattern has been lization and our place at the top of in 1669 Polish hunters captured a woman has been taken in by Sal Lou, enacted out of a genuine concern for an invented evolutionary hierarchy. young man who had apparently been his wife Rochom Soy, and their chil- their lives and a desire to teach them If the only thing that makes us hu- living with bears for a substantial pe- dren, and seems calm but somewhat human love and compassion, as well man is our genetic structure, rather riod of his life. He moved on all fours, distrustful around the family and as for the personal gain of linguists, than our philosophical depth, faith ate raw meat, honey and crabapples, other humans. She speaks no known philosophers, and doctors whose ca- in religion and social mores, we are and spoke with bear-like grunts. He language, but indicates hunger by reers pivot on their work with feral forced to reevaluate the world we’ve was estimated to be thirteen years rubbing her stomach, and moves pri- children. The intention behind the built for ourselves in a way that most old, and was given the name Joseph. marily in a crouched position. The civilizing process becomes unimport- people find terrifying. Of course, fe- Attempts to teach him to speak were family’s home is filled with journal- ant when we consider how ineffec- ral children are not the only humans unsuccessful, but as a natural curi- ists, researchers, tourists, and villag- tual it has been in bettering the lives who have given Western civilization osity he was considered a valuable ers, each with their own idea of who of these children and in providing such a frightening reflection of itself: object—he was given by King Casi- the woman is and what she signifies. researchers with the answers they it had a similar experience when Eu- mir to a politician as a gift. The Vice- Some believe she is inhabited by dan- seek. [The term ‘feral children’ as ropeans first set foot in the Americas Chamberlain who acquired him used gerous spirits, others that her story is used in this article refers to children and Africa, an experience from which him for household chores and as a a hoax, and to many she presents the who have lived naturally outside of it has yet to recover, and has used source of amusement. Joseph was 26 Feral Children… JRS Issue 9 27 known to frequently leave to spend animals, which she ate raw, and dig- new language, but since it is the story harm and the cold. John Ssebunnya time with bears, who always accepted ging root vegetables from the ground she told for the rest of her life it’s as ran away from home in Uganda, him; this was clearly a more fulfilling with her enlarged thumb and forefin- “true” as any other.) Much emphasis 1988, after witnessing his father mur- and non-exploitive familial structure ger. She seemed to entertain herself was placed on her unknown country der his mother. He was welcomed for the boy than his new life among with perfect imitations of birdsongs. of origin by the biographers and sci- into a family of monkeys who cared humans, who were never able to keep After many successful escapes, she entists who spent time with her; the for him for three years. him away from the woods. That he was placed in a nearby hospital where French at this time were particularly What will become of Rochom was able to continue his relation- she might be better socialized, al- enthusiastic about classifying various P’ngieng? She has made numerous ship with the bears is rare; other feral though she was brought to the home ethnicities. escape attempts since she was taken children have been kept under much of the Viscount when he held social In some ways, Memmie Le in by her “family” and has shown no tighter watch. The following century gatherings as a curiosity to impress Blanc became a very ordinary wom- signs of speaking (although she might brought with it the growth of philoso- his guests. (She lost the favor of some an. While confined, she lost many be capable of doing so, as she had al- phy and intellectualism which would by throwing live frogs she had caught of her impressive adaptations—she ready acquired language at the time ensure a much more controlled envi- onto the dinner table.) The hospi- could no longer scramble up tree of her disappearance). At present, ronment for feral children. tal she was placed in began to feed trunks, catch dozens of frogs in min- nothing is known about her except In the summer of 1731, a girl her cooked meats, wine, and salted utes, see everything around her at that she is an adult woman with no was spotted near a French village breads. This diet resulted in frequent once—and she also lost her health. attachment to the family she is being painted black, wielding a club; she vomiting, bowel pain, and bloody She learned to speak, but could never held by, and for an unknown reason was about ten years old. Frightened coughing, and nearly killed her. Lest relate to other humans equally, or wishes to be elsewhere. She will spend villagers attempted to scare her away she die unbaptized, she was given the find a place in society. She was spon- at least the next few months being with a bulldog, which she killed. The name Marie-Angelique Memmie Le sored by several researchers after spoon-fed by her “mother,” tested by Viscount d’Epinoy heard of the girl Blanc. She recovered, slowly, when leaving the convent, but spent the doctors, photographed by reporters, and ordered her captured, which she was allowed to drink fresh ani- rest of her life sickly, impoverished, observed by psychologists. Given the proved difficult as she perched in the mal blood. Her sponsor, d’Epinoy, and alone. It is impossible to guess experiences of so many feral children branches of a tree when approached; died during her recovery and she was how long she might have lived in the before her, it is difficult to imagine she was lured down eventually by a placed in a convent where she was woods had she not been captured, her living a natural and healthy life. young woman carrying a baby and forbidden to climb trees or swim, and impossible to decide which life The thought of a human living a basket of vegetables and fish, seiz- and was put to work with household would have been a better one for her, without society, raised by animals, ing her as she descended from the chores. In the convent she began to but Le Blanc’s life in society was just alone in the woods might be unnerv- tree. She was placed in the care of speak, initially in awkward shrieks, as lonely as the one she led while fe- ing, but the option of restraining, a shepherd who received financial but eventually became able to ar- ral, and was filled with the torment of force-feeding, and civilizing feral backing from d’Epinoy, from whom ticulate full sentences. As a young a deteriorating body which had been children (or feral adults, in the case of she attempted many escapes. The girl adult, she was able to construct part forced on her by those who wanted to Rochom P’ngieng) seems far less hu- had adapted brilliantly to her natu- of her story. By her account, around help. mane. And for all our hopes of learn- ral environment: her palms were of age seven she was kidnapped, painted Feral children are still found ing about language development, the an ordinary size, but her fingers and black, and sold into slavery. She and in modern society, even in large cit- significance of family and what it thumbs had developed greatly to as- another girl, whose language she did ies. Ivan Mishukov left his Moscow means to be human from these chil- sist in climbing trees; her eyes moved not speak, escaped together but even- home in 1996 at age four, escaping an dren, we have learned nothing. In with an animal’s quickness, allowing tually separated after a fight and she overburdened mother and her alco- rethinking the histories of feral chil- an increased awareness of her sur- had lived on her own until capture. holic boyfriend. He supported him- dren, and reevaluating our approach roundings; she ran at great speeds (This story sounds distinctly like self by begging and shared his scraps to them, we could learn a great deal. in a partially crouched position; she something dictated by others to a girl with wild dogs, who made him leader There is something about “human- was adept at catching and skinning trying to make sense of herself and a of the pack and protected him from ity” these children have wanted to 28 Feral Children… JRS Issue 9 29 escape: Memmie Le Blanc ran away III spent their wages in bars and dance- from slavery; Ivan Mishukov and halls but we had no wages to spend John Ssebunnya left dangerous fami- Cascadia Journal so we went to bars that stayed open lies. What frightens us in these feral all night. / We had no wages to spend child-mirrors of ourselves is not their 1907, 1912 and no money to spend, so we went lack of humanity, but our own; per- to bars that stayed open all night. / haps we are not so civilized as we like (from F I L M) We went to bars that stayed open all to think. Their stories also show us Ola Ståhl night. / As we had no money we went how humane other animals can be. to bars that stayed open all night and Interspecies child-rearing is relatively Aberdeen, somebody usually bought you a glass common among animals, particu- Washington, 1907. of beer. / We went to bars that stayed larly mammals, and shows that the open all night and somebody usually family structure is a significant one, Aberdeen was a timber city. / At bought you a glass of beer and so but not in the sense that we often that time Aberdeen was a timber you could stay inside. / We went to think. Human children have, in many city. / It was a timber city, large for- bars that stayed open all night and if of these cases, found a healthier so- ests nearby, many sawmills. / Many somebody bought you a glass of beer cial environment with other animals, sawmills too, nearby. / At that time you could stay inside, and usually animals that protect, teach, and feed Aberdeen was a timber city, large somebody bought you a glass of beer them not because they belong in the forests nearby, many sawmills too, and so you could usually stay inside. family, but because they are in the also nearby. / large forests nearby, / and usually, but not always, some- family. In our egotistical fascination sawmills too where many workers. body would buy you a glass of beer with metacognition and morality, we / It was a timber city. / At that time and so you could stay in the bar all have forgotten about one of the most Aberdeen was a timber city, large night. / We went to bars that stayed significant evolutionary traits, one we forests nearby, many sawmills that open all night and they were heated share with many species and which employed large numbers of workers. and there were stools and benches to feral children have demonstrated / and sawmills that employed large sit on. / Somebody usually bought well: adaptability. Animals that re- numbers of workers. / large num- you a glass of beer and you could quire fixed diets, environments, and bers of workers and they spent their stay indoors and there were stools social structures in an unpredictable wages in bars and dancehalls. / There and benches to sit on. / Somebody world have little chance for survival. were many sawmills nearby that em- usually bought you a glass of beer. The flexibility demonstrated by an ployed large numbers of workers and / Somebody. / They stayed open all overgrown thumb or an interspecies they spent their wages in bars and night, the bars, and they were heated family is a trait we should take pride dancehalls. / They spent their money too and in the bars there were stools in, not try to erase. When we begin to going to dancehalls outside the city. and chairs to sit on and somebody think of ourselves as the interdepen- / They spent their wages in bars and usually bought you a glass of beer dent and changeable animals that we dancehalls outside the city. / They and if somebody bought you a glass are, rather than as a conquering and spent their wages in dancehalls but of beer you could stay indoors and perfected species to triumph over all we had no money so we went. / They there were stools and benches to sit others, we might just become a little spent their wages in bars and dance- on in the bars. / In the evening. / I more human. halls outside the city but we had no was walking around one evening on money and so we went to bars that my way to a bar. / One evening I was stayed open all night. / but we had no on my way to one of the bars and it money for food and shelter. / They had been snowing. / One evening I 30 Cascadia Journal 1907, 1912 JRS Issue 9 31 was walking through the snow. / It much to my surprise I discovered it me and my comrades no longer went would dispose over. / He pointed out had been snowing and I was walk- was a purse. / Much to my surprise hungry and cold. two sleeping berths we would dispose ing in the moonlight. / One evening it I discovered it was a purse with four over, though the carriage was dirty. had been snowing and I was walking five-dollar coins. / It was a purse. / I Oregon, 1912. / He pointed at two of the sleeping in the moonlight on my way to one kicked it and it. / For no good reason. berths and said, these are yours to of the bars. / I was walking through / I kicked it for no good reason and We registered at a bureau. / at an un- dispose over, though the railway car- the snow and I saw. / I was walking there was a tinkling sound. / I kicked employment bureau. / We registered riage, it was dirty. / The railway car- through the snow on my way to one it without thinking about it. / For at an unemployment agency. / at an riage was dirty and messy. / It was of the bars and in the moonlight I no reason, I kicked it without think- unemployment bureau. / We regis- much worse than the dirtiest of ships. saw an object in front of me. / I was ing about it, and entirely so, entirely tered at an unemployment bureau. / The railway carriage was dirty and walking in moonlight and in snow without thought, I kicked the object / We registered at an employment messy. / The railway carriage was too. / I was walking through the snow I had seen in the moonlight, the ob- bureau and were sent to a railway dirtier and messier than the filthiest on my way to one of the bars and in ject in front of me. / There was. / It construction site. / a railway con- of ships. / It was dirtier and messier. the moonlight I saw an object in the made a tinkling sound and I got curi- struction site in Oregon. / We were / The railway carriage was dirty and snow in front of me. / I saw an ob- ous and bent over to fetch it from the sent to a railway construction site in messy. / It was filthy. / The railway ject in the snow in front of me on my snow in front of me and much to my Oregon. / We registered at an unem- carriage was dirty and messy, filthier way through the snow to one of the surprise I discovered it was a purse ployment agency. /at an agency for than the filthiest of ships. / Filthier bars that stayed open all night. / In and it contained four five-dollar the unemployed. / We registered at than most ships. / It was filthier than the moonlight I saw an object in the coins. / When I kicked it, it had made an employment agency and were sent the filthiest of ships and there were snow in front of me and I kicked it. / I a tinkling sound, and it had made to a railway construction site in Or- many such carriages. / They were saw an object in the snow in front of me curious, the tinkling sound had egon and when we arrived. / We were filthy and there were many of them. me and without thinking I kicked it. made me curious, and so I bent over sent to a railway construction site in / They were filthy and there were / I kicked it for no reason. / I kicked to fetch it from the snow in front of Oregon and when we arrived in Or- many carriages. / many such carriag- it without thinking about it. / For no me and as I bent over to fetch it from egon. / when we arrived at the site. es. / filthier than the filthiest of ships reason, I kicked it without thinking the snow in front of me I discovered / We registered at an employment and there were many such carriages. about it. / In the moonlight I saw it was a purse. / It was a tinkling agency and we were sent to a railway / many such carriages each one worse an object in the snow in front of me sound, clearly. / It made a tinkling construction site in Oregon and when than the other. / There were many and without thinking, I kicked it. / I sound, clearly, and I got curious and we arrived they made note of our carriages each worse than the other. kicked it and it. / I kicked it and there bent over to fetch it from the snow names and. / When we arrived in Or- / They were filthier than the filthiest was a tinkling sound. / I kicked it and in front of me and much to my sur- egon they made note of our names. / of ships and there were many such it gave off a tinkling sound. / There prise I discovered it was a purse and a note were made of our names and carriages, each worse than the other was a tinkling sound. / There was. / it contained four five-dollar coins. / there was a chef and he took us into and this was where / this was a place The tinkling sound made me curi- It contained four five-dollar coins an old railway carriage and pointed where humans were supposed to live. ous. / I was curious. / I kicked it and and me and my friends did not have at two sleeping berths. / When we ar- / each worse than the other and this it made a tinkling sound and it made to go hungry and cold. / The purse I rived in Oregon they made note of was where humans were supposed to me curious. / It made me curious and had kicked contained four five-dollar our names and there was a chef and live. / This was where. / each worse I bent over to fetch the object from coins and so me and my friends did he took us into an old railway car- than the other and this was where 50 the snow. / It made a tinkling sound not have to go hungry. / We no longer riage and pointed at two sleeping or 60 humans were supposed to live. and it made. / It made me curious had to go hungry and cold. / Me and berths we would dispose over. / When / where 50 or 60 of us were supposed and I bent over to fetch it from the my friends no longer had to go hun- we arrived in Oregon they made note to live. / 50 or 60 of us and the others snow in front of me and I discovered gry and cold. / We didn’t go hungry of our names. There was a chef and returned in the evening and had some it was a purse. / I discovered. / I bent and cold. / We didn’t. / We no lon- he took us into an old railway car- food. / They returned in the evening over to fetch it from the snow and ger went hungry and cold. / and so riage and pointed out two berths we and had some food and we did too. / 32 Cascadia Journal 1907, 1912 JRS Issue 9 33

We had some food too. / each worse long we wandered or how far we near Mount Shasta. / We had heard go and about a fortnight after he left than the other and this was where 50 wandered. / We wandered through you could make more money work- I received a letter with enough money or 60 of us were supposed to live and some desolate regions. For how long ing the copper mines near Mount for a ticket out there. / I received a when the others got back in the eve- we wandered I cannot remember. / Shasta but it was a long way away. / letter from my comrade, and it said ning they had some food and we did I simply cannot remember for how We had heard you could make more for me to come to Mount Shasta. too. / We had some food too and then long we wandered but we wandered money working the copper mines / The letter said for me to come to they went to bed. / They had some for a long time, and through desolate near Mount Shasta but Mount Shas- Mount Shasta. / He had sent me a food and we did too and then some regions too. / We wandered through ta was a long way away and we would letter with enough money for a ticket went to bed and some played cards. desolate regions too – for how long have to save up a lot of money to / out there, and it said for me to come / some went to bed and some played I cannot remember. / For how long and we would have to save up a lot to Mount Shasta. / The letter, it said. cards. / They played cards then they we wandered I cannot remember. / of money for a ticket to take us there. / We saved up until we had enough went to bed too. / They had some We wandered through some desolate / We would have to. / We heard you money for a ticket there and then we food and we did too then some went regions – for how long I cannot re- could make money working the cop- drew for it and my mate got to go, to bed and some played cards and we member – and we wandered until we per mines. / We had heard you could though a fortnight later I got a letter played some cards and in the morn- reached the main railway line. / We make more money working the cop- with enough money for a ticket out ing we decided to leave. / me and my wandered through. / For how long per mines near Mount Shasta but this there and I went. / I went out there. / mate decided to leave immediately. / we wandered I do not know. / We was a long way away and we would I got a ticket and I went out there. / I In the morning me and my mate de- wandered until we reached the main have to save up a lot of money for went out there. cided to leave immediately. / In the railway line and when we reached the a ticket there. / and we had to save morning, we left immediately. / In main railway line we got work load- up. / We heard you could make more Mount Shasta, the morning. / They had some food ing goods onto transport carriages. money working the copper mines California, 1912. and we did too and then some went / We wandered until we reached the near Mount Shasta and we saved as to bed and some played cards and we main railway line where we got work much money as we could until we The mining company had its own played cards. / We played cards and loading goods onto carriages. / load- had enough for a ticket there. / and railway. / The mining company had. then went to bed and in the morning ing timbre onto carriages. / We wan- we saved as much money as we could. / It had its own. / The mining com- me and my mate decided to leave im- dered until we reached the main rail- / We saved up as much as we could pany had its own railway line up the mediately. / We played cards and then way line. / the central railway line. / It until we had enough money for a mountain. / The mining company has went to bed and in the morning me was the main or central railway line. / ticket there and then we drew for it. its own railway line as far as possible and my comrade left immediately. We reached. / We wandered until we / and we then drew for it. / We then. / up the mountain and then a cable car. reached the main or central railway We had heard you could make more / The mining company had its own We wandered through desolate re- line where we got work loading tim- money working the copper mines railway line taking you as far up the gions. / through some desolate re- bre onto carriages but the wages were near Mount Shasta but this was a mountain as possible then there was gions. / We wandered through some poor. / The wages were bad and. / The long way away. We saved up as much a cable car. / There was a cable car desolate regions and I cannot re- wages were bad. Everything we spent as we could until we had enough for but when I arrived the cable. / The member for how long we wandered. on food and accommodation. / The a ticket there and then we drew for it mining company had its own railway / We wandered through some deso- wages were bad. We spent it all on and my mate got to go. / We drew for line taking you as far up the moun- late regions. For how long I cannot food and accommodation. / We spent it and in the end my mate got to go. tain as possible, then there was a remember. / I cannot remember for all our wages on food and accom- / We saved up until we had enough cable car though when I arrived the how long. / We wandered through modation. / The wages were bad and for a ticket there and then we drew cable was torn and the engineer was some desolate regions and I cannot we spent it all on food and accom- for it and my mate got to go. / We worried. / When I arrived the cable remember for how long. / We wan- modation and. / The wages were bad saved up until we had enough for a was torn. / then there was a cable dered through desolate regions. / I and we heard you could make more ticket there. We then drew for it and car though when I arrived the cable simply cannot remember for how money working the copper mines my mate got to go. / My mate got to was torn and the engineer was very 34 Cascadia Journal 1907, 1912 JRS Issue 9 35 worried. / the cable was torn and the and my mate, we spliced the cable in with a different job and we cooked day. / For the first time in my life, ev- engineer was very worried and he two places in less than three hours. our meals ourselves and every day ery month I put all the money I had said to me. / The engineer said to me. / He said, if you can do it, you can we sent for the groceries we needed saved in the bank, but then one day I / The mining company had its own have all the help you need and in less from the station down the mountain. read in the newspaper that the bank railway line taking you as far up the than three hours me and my comrade / and every day we cooked our meals where I had deposited all my money mountain as possible, then there was had spliced the cable in two places ourselves and we sent for the grocer- had gone bankrupt and closed down. a cable car though when I arrived and I was immediately offered a job. ies we needed from the station down / but then one day, it stood to read the cable was torn and the engineer / The engineer immediately offered the mountain. / Every day me and in the newspaper that the bank where was very worried and he said to me. / me a job with a higher salary than the other fellow, we cooked our own I had saved all my money had gone He said, there’s no one here who can my mate. / and we spliced the cable in meals and we sent for groceries from bankrupt. / It had closed down. / For splice cable. / He said to me, there’s two places, in less than three hours, the station and I stayed all winter. / the first time in my life, every month no one here skilled in splicing cables. and I was immediately offered a job We cooked every day and every day I had saved as much money as I had / He said. / then there was a cable car with a higher salary than my mate’s. we sent for groceries and I stayed been able to and I had put it all in though when I arrived the cable was / The engineer immediately offered there for four or five months. / and the bank, but then one day it stood torn and the engineer was very wor- my a job with a higher salary. / with I stayed there all winter, for four or to read in the newspaper that the ried and he said to me, he said, there’s a high salary. / The engineer immedi- five months. / I stayed. / We cooked bank where I had deposited all my no one here skilled in splicing cables. ately offered me a job with a higher everyday and sent for groceries from money had closed down. / It was go- / He said, there’s no one here skilled salary than my mate’s. the station down the mountain and ing bankrupt, and it did too. / It went in splicing cables and I said to him. / I stayed all winter, for four or five bankrupt. / closed down. / The bank I said, I’m a sailor and I have often I got to stay in a small hut. / The min- months, enjoying myself and saving where I had deposited all my money had to splice rope and cable. / both ing company. / There was a small hut. up money that I put in the bank. / I closed down. / bankrupt. / It closed rope and cable. / I said, I often have / The mining company owned a small stayed for four or five months, all down, and so I lost all my money too. had to splice both rope and cable and hut nearby that I got to stay in. / I got winter, enjoying myself and saving / I had gone bankrupt. / It stood to he seemed awfully pleased to hear me to stay in the small hut with another up money, every month, for the first read in the newspaper that it was go- say that and he said to me. / He then fellow with a different job. / I got to time in my life. / I stayed all winter, ing bankrupt and it did too, it went said to me. / I said, I’m a sailor and I stay in a small hut nearby owned by enjoying myself, saving up money, bankrupt and closed down, and so I have often had to splice both rope and the company and I stayed / I stayed for the first time in my life. / For the lost all my money too. /all my sav- cable and he seemed awfully pleased in the small hut owned by the mining first time in my life I saved up money, ings. / It closed down and I lost all to hear me say that and he said to me, company with another fellow with a every month. / I stayed there all win- my savings too. / all the money I had you can have all the help you need. different job and we had to cook our ter, four or five months, and for the saved. / The bank went bankrupt and / He said, you can have all the help own meals. / I stayed in a small hut first time in my life I saved up money, I lost all my savings. / bankrupt. / It you need if you think you can do it. owned by the company. / It was a every month when I got my wages, closed down. / He said, if you think you can do it, small hut nearby, owned by the min- I saved up money that I put in the you can have all the help you need. / ing company, and I got to stay there bank. / For the first time in my life, Endnotes I said, I’m a sailor and I have often with another fellow with a different every month I saved up money that 1 The project F I L M dates back to 2008, when had to splice both rope and cable and job and we cooked our own meals. / I put in the bank. / For the first time Ola Ståhl was unexpectedly given the handwrit- he seemed awfully pleased to hear We cooked our meals ourselves. / We in my life. / I put the money in the ten manuscript of the unpublished memoirs me say that and he said to me, if you cooked our own meals in the hut and bank, every month. / All the money of his great granduncle, a person about whom he knew virtually nothing. Having previously can do it, you can have all the help we sent for groceries every day. / and that I saved. / and every month I worked extensively with the restaging and re- you need, and in three hours time me everyday we sent for groceries from put all the money I had saved in the working of found sound and text, Ståhl began and my mate had spliced the cable in the station. / We sent for the groceries bank and then one day I read in the reworking this found manuscript, seeking to two places. / We spliced the cable in we needed for cooking every day. / I newspaper. / Every month I put all engage and amplify its peculiarities not simply or primarily in terms of its content, but also three hours, me and my mate. / Me stayed in the hut with another fellow my savings in the bank but then one 36 Cascadia Journal 1907, 1912 JRS Issue 9 37 in terms of the style of the writing, its poverty and its affected, stuttered, polylingual quality. IV The Nazis used Terezin as a “model Considering the manuscript less a genealogical ghetto”—a concentration camp document than the index of a series of signifi- where they sent Jewish artists and cant geo- and sociopolitical shifts, these rework- Vedem ings were intended to explore the ways in which musicians (and many others) to particular forms of writing articulate subjective A presentation by Matthew Stadler make a separate “Jewish city” that political experiences; how, for instance, the the Nazis could show off, principally experience of migration creates a polylingual (“In the Lead”) was a secretly in propaganda films, such as “The site where language becomes uncertain, sub- Vedem ject to continuous displacement, or how the produced “zine” made from 1942-1944 Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews.” The lack of conventional literary tropes articulates by a group of Jewish boys in Terezin, Nazis said that Terezin, which they and negotiates positions within shifting class the Nazi concentration camp near called Theresienstadt, offered an ex- structures. The overall project F I L M com- prises several series of such rewriting exercises, Prague. Working with the guidance ample of the positive effects of ghet- utilizing different methods, interweaving the of a 29-year old school teacher who toization: The Jews at Terezin would manuscript with fragments of text from a wide shared their barracks, Valtr Eisinger, develop and practice Jewish culture array of discourses around such disparate but interlinked topics as autobiography, medicine, the boys made an issue of Vedem separate from non-Jews; They would film theory, optics, camera and film mechan- every week for two years. On Friday achieve the same kind of purity the ics, class structure, economics and migration. evenings they read each new issue Nazis wanted for Aryan culture, The extract published in this issue of Journal of Radical Shimming makes use of a process by out loud and then hid them. Vedem alone among other Jews. which the text is translated very quickly between survived the war in the hands of one Swedish and English, in such a fashion that trac- of the boys, Zdenek Taussig, and ul- es of many of the loops and repetitions you go through as a translator, trying to find suitable timately came to light in a samizdat equivalents between languages, are kept in the publication in Prague in 1978. Here is text, generating a rambling, incessantly looping, what I’ve learned about Vedem from repetitive voice which never ceases to assert it- that publication (now published as self despite its own stuttered absurdity. We Are Children All the Same) and my own research about Terezin and cultural life in the Nazi era. Children at Terezin posed to perform for a Nazi Terezin is an old fortress outside of propaganda film about the benefits of concen- Prague, built by the Austrian Empire tration camps in 1780. By the mid-19th century it Conditions were brutal. Of 144,000 had become a prison, and it held pris- Jews sent to Terezin, 33,000 died of oners of war in WW I. starvation or disease, and 88,000 were sent to Auschwitz to be killed. Only 17,247 survived to see liberation on May 9, 1945. That is, only one out of nine survived. It was a work camp, but for cultural workers, and so, amidst the disease, hardship, and executions, there were concerts and plays and lectures. Nazis filmed some of these events, and the Red Cross was brought in to see “photo-op” Terezin, an 18th century fortress near Prague, that was a concentration camp in WW II. glimpses of life at Terezin. 38 Vedem JRS Issue 9 39

Michael Kater, in his Composers of Around 90 boys passed through One of the boys was Kurt Kutouc work and experience together, never the Nazi Era, tells an affecting story Home One during the time Valtr [10], a survivor who was the elected as an object to circulate about Richard Strauss, who was the Eisinger was there. Two dozen, or chairman of the “self-government of towering figure in German music, be- so, became involved with the “self- Shkid.” In an interview with Marie fore the rise of the Nazis. But Strauss, government of Shkid” and the secret Rut Krizkova, and another survivor despite evident sympathy for some magazine, Vedem. of Terezin and Home One, Zdenek of the worst Nazi cultural policies, Ornest, he recalled the origins of gradually fell out of favor. His Jewish Shkid: relatives were captured and impris- oned, some at Terezin. Kalin portrays as “possessing a sense of sacro ego’ ismo,” and tells the story of Strauss driving to Terezin (from Vienna) to fetch one of his elderly relatives, a woman named Paula Neumann. Strauss drove up to the gates and an- “Home One,” the barracks of the “Republic of Shkid,” Terezin. nounced “I am the composer Richard Strauss.” He was laughed at by the dumb-founded guards. Neumann died at Terezin, of spotted fever.

Within Terezin, prisoners set up self-government through a “Council The Vedem shield, designed and drawn by Petr Ginz. of Elders” that answered to the SS guards. They were kept in “homes,” For two years an issue of Vedem was with men separated from women, produced every Friday. Petr Ginz and children separated, largely, from designed the emblem and drew most both. In “Home One,” from 1942 of the covers. The shield for Vedem until 1945, a group of teenage boys From: We Are Children All the Same by shows a Jules Verne-=style space- lived under the care of a 29-year old Marie Rut Krizkova, Kurt Jiri Kotouc, and ship zipping across a book toward a teacher named Valtr Eisinger. Zdenek Ornest star. Ginz, who was 14 when Vedem began, was a driving force behind Like the boys of the St. Petersburg the publication. He contributed a orphanage, the boys of Home One weekly serial, “The Cunning Drews,” decided to make a magazine for each and insisted on the seriousness and other. Vedem was produced on care- ambition of their project. A “to-do” fully hoarded paper by hand, and note he wrote in Fall of 1944 reads An issue of Vedem, May 28, 1944. The logo and sometimes with a typewriter, and “Do linocuts, drawings, shorthand, illustration are by Petr Ginz, 15-years old. then read aloud to the boys of Home English, Take a good look at Vedem, One on Friday evenings. Copies were its standards, and come up with hidden in the barracks. It was an en- something, but something really wor- tirely performative act, an object in- thy doing (possibly linocuts…)” Valtr Eisenberg tended only to enable certain kinds of 40 Vedem JRS Issue 9 41

Petr Ginz followed up Zdenek’s re- port with a visit to the head of the crematorium, a Dr. Bock.

Petr Ginz, age ten, who, from age 14 to 16, was From Vedem: Pirate sings, written and illus- “editor” of Vedem. trated by Petr Ginz. The other boys called Petr “editor” Vedem wasn’t just a vehicle for of the magazine In a weekly feature fantasy but a place for the boys to of Vedem, the “One of Us” column( observe Terezin closely and chron- that profiled boys in Home One), icle life in the camp. A regular fea- From Vedem: an interview with the manager of the crematorium, Dr. Bock, by Petr Ginz. Terezin survivor, Jiri Bruml, wrote ture was called “Rambles Around From Vedem: characters from Men Offside go- the following account of his friend Terezin.” Zdenek Taussig wrote a de- The “Rambles Around Terezin” ing to “Oostertransporte” trains. Petr Ginz: tailed account of Terezin’s cremato- took up a great deal of Vedem and rium, explaining all of the procedures ultimately presented the most thor- “Rambles Around Terezin” also took and purposes of this central element ough account of life at the camp in many of the lectures and plays and of the concentration camp. that I have read. But the camp was concerts that were put on by prison- revealed in other ways too. For ex- ers in the camp. ample, when the famous Czech writ- er, Karel Polacek, arrived in Terezin In late September, 1944, Petr Ginz, in June of 1943, the boys of Vedem age 16, and his cousin Pavel were put started their own illustrated serial on a train to Auschwitz. A 14-year version of Polacek’s popular novel, old friend of Petr, Eva Ginzova, also Men Offside. In the Vedem ver- a prisoner at Terezin, watched as they sion, the petit bourgeois characters were taken away. Crematorium at Terezin. of Prague who make up the center of Polacek’s novel, are transported to Terezin, where they carry on their lives, absurdly, amidst the hardships of the camp. The boys ended the se- From Vedem: Jiri Bruml (age 14) writing about rial by putting the characters “onto his friend Petr Ginz (age 15). the transport to Poland,” i.e., sending In addition to “The Cunning Drews” them to the death camps. Petr wrote a pirate novel, The Conquerers, “Mad Augustus,” a fantasy series, and many pirate songs that he illustrated for Vedem. From Vedem: Zdenek Taussig’s drawing of the Terezin crematorium. 42 Vedem JRS Issue 9 43

— notes — V as well as my present views. All.

Dear Laura, The word power is a good place to start on these reflections. As a pro- October 14, 2004 fessor Paul was always talking about power—how to get it and how to Here is my promised letter. Real- wield it successfully. This is not no- ly, it is kind of an excuse for me to table by itself. Machiavelli talked write about my experience of having about power, too. But given Paul’s known Paul Wellstone, and maybe values and sympathies, he invariably get to communicate a little bit of approached the problem of power what I saw in this man, and a lot from the perspective of those who of the lessons I directly trace to my are assumed to have none, at least ac- contact with him. After reading this cording to the conventional wisdom. I think you will have a better idea As a graduate student, he studied of why I value my experiences and and obsessed about the young civil memories of Paul Wellstone so much. rights workers who turned militant in Without knowing how this letter will SNCC. As a scholar, he wrote about end, I can already say that it will be the disenfranchised rural popula- mostly about me. I don’t feel so bad tions of Minnesota, first in Power’ From We Are Children All the Same: Eva Ginzova, age 14, diary of Terezin. about that though, because that is an line and then in How The Rural important aspect of the kind of poli- Poor Got Power. And as a campus They never returned. tics Paul Wellstone taught: that tak- figure, he was regularly advising stu- ing power includes and is inseperable dent activists on tactical matters, and Because of the post-War Soviet do- from knowing and discovering ever encouraging us to think in terms of minion over the Czech Republic and more fully yourself. Being politically power–getting us to ask, where is it the stubborn legacy of Czech anti- active or engaged must be in part concentrated in the institution, and semitism, the experience of Jewish about yourself. In strategic terms, I who personifies it? Answers, respec- victims of the war was suppressed for believe this personal dimension is an tively: on the board of trustees, and many decades. Vedem, which mirac- infrequently recognized key to build- the college president, of course. So ulously survived the end of the war ing successful and lasting movements, the trustees and the president at Car- in the hands of Zdenek Taussig (who whether those movements are con- leton became the targets of campus then passed the cache along to Kurt centrated and short term, or diffuse activism, not out of any juvenile anti- Kotouc), did not see the light of day and long term. In existential terms, authoritarianism (although there is until “the thaw” of the mid-60s and the arc connecting French thought as nothing wrong with juvenile anti- the emergence of anti-Soviet resis- exemplified by Foucault to a feminist authoritarianism–for juveniles!) but tance in 1968. Ten years later a samiz- theorist like Marilyn Frye to the new rather out of an analysis of power. dat version of this book was made, communism of Hardt and Negri, the Thanks to Paul Wellstone, the stu- and that found official publication, personal is recognized as the eternal dent body generally and his students finally, in 1995 as We Are Children (in not sufficient) fount of political in particular were well-versed in such All the Same by Marie Rut Krizkova, power. So I guess it’s inevitable. This rational and realpolitik analyses. Kurt Jiri Kotouc, and Zdenek Ornest letter is about Paul Wellstone. This (Aventinum Nakladatelstvi, Prague). letter is about my political education, One other thing about Paul that is 44 Dear Laura, JRS Issue 9 45 worth mentioning here. The reason meeting the CRI students tried the made a huge impact on me, but es- or “liberal” or “radical” or any such that he advised students on matters sit-down blockade again. This time I pecially because it was coming from shorthand description for an ideolog- of campus activism was because he was there, as was Paul and the radi- the mouth of somebody who, judged ical bearing. Nowadays I wonder was would occasionally sit in on student cal feminist philosopher prof, Maria only by his moral agenda, would that because he himself just didn’t group meetings and take part in Lugones. They were both careful to seem a namby-pamby, spineless care for such shortcuts, or was it be- the discussions. I was at a meeting remain standing, but both took turns bleeding heart liberal. This is impor- cause those kinds of words hadn’t yet of the student group Coalition for addressing the president and those tant because the painting of the liber- gained such widespread currency as Responsible Investment (a campus trustees who would listen, speaking in al, and by extension the whole of the instant markers of different and op- group dedicated to agitating for the favor of the student action. The trust- Left, as made up of weaklings was at posing agendas, ie that the Age of divestment of College stock hold- ees snuck out the back and this par- that time just beginning. (This was in Soundbites wasn’t in 1987 what it is ings in businesses that did work in ticular moment was defused. Paul’s the late Eighties.) Alan Colmes, the now. What I do remember well about South Africa) which Paul attended. relationship was always strained with utterly pathetic so-called representa- this class was the way that people’s When the discussion turned to how the president after that, as you can tive of the Left on Fox’s Hannity & values would emerge through rea- the group had seemingly exhausted imagine. When Paul went to the Sen- Colmes, is the present day result of soned discussions. I think that’s all the formal channels of petition, ate and was hailed by the president that recasting. Combatting the image partly why the students who really one student proposed that we con- as a great member of the Carleton and concept of leftists as people who took to his kind of politics frequently sider taking more radical action and community, it sounded more hollow are constitutionally weak and quis- moved forward as activists in a very forcing the administration’s hand than Trent Lott’s words at Paul’s me- ling-like is a project that could learn confident way–he helped show young with the spectre of bad publicity that morial service. But I have to say, in much from studying the political people a way to form reasoned argu- would surround any story of them hindsight I now realize that this was practice of Paul Wellstone. Because ments that supported their idealism. harshly disciplining the students act- a pretty special time in the history of of my contact with him and later That fundamental marriage of ratio- ing in the cause of justice. I remember campus activism, and it’s far from the my own study, I for one find it im- nality and idealism, which seemed so Paul reacted by smiling and shaking campus climate of today. Can you possible to seriously think about the natural as a first lesson in what to his head, saying “Who is this guy? imagine today tenured full professors Left–the genuine class struggle, anti- believe politically is a very impor- Why don’t I know him?!” He loved joining with a group of undergrads to colonial, and downtrodden’s Left–as tant lesson for today, where the Right it when people started thinking that confront the trustees over some mat- anything but a positive contribution has almost completely eradicated way. Anyway, the point of this di- ter of global injustice? No way.) to History’s chapters on generosity the rational from the public politi- gression is simply to underscore the and hope, of course, but courage and cal discourse. (By the way, I am most fact that the man was hands-on, and Back to the thing about power. So strength as well. hopeful and positive about Barack made no distinction between theory what I’m saying here is that Paul was Obama’s political future when I think and practice. not naïve to the workings of realpoli- I took two Wellstone classes, both in of him as an agent for the reintroduc- tik, as progressives are often charac- my first year. The first was an intro tion of rationality to electoral poli- (And just to finish the story—later terized. I think one of his biggest and class, in which we mostly read and tics. In the end that may be his most that year the CRI students attempt- most risk-heavy achievements as a discussed texts that outlined very cur- valuable gift to the political system ed to obstruct the trustees at their teacher was insisting over and over to rent social problems (mostly having that might very well consume him.) quarterly meeting. Paul was there, his sheltered students with do-gooder to do with welfare-state policy) and too, and I can’t remember if he actu- intentions that politics is in fact an offered solutions using competing Anyway, it was the second class I ally sat down or not. [I wasn’t there; exercise of power, and that a politi- vocabularies and ideologies. Texts took with Paul that really opened my probably out getting high.] Either cal victory is when you force your assigned included titles by Charles eyes to the depths of political activ- way, he was threatened with dismissal adversary to do something that they Murray, Milton Friedman, Piven/ ism, and his own understanding of it. by the new college president, which really do not want to do. This along Cloward, and Kevin Phillips. An odd This was his annual spring offering: led to a separate but related flurry with other ideas I was absorbing as thing that I recall is that in class Paul Social Movements and Protest Poli- of activism. At the next quarter’s an eighteen and nineteen year-old never used the terms “conservative” tics. This was something like a class 46 Dear Laura, JRS Issue 9 47 in grassroots organizing, and it was activist Phillip Agee, earth first co- studying. I wasn’t the only one to one–engaged me highly because they the classroom milieu in which he was founder Dave Foreman, founder of feel this way; a lot of my schoolmates were relevant to my life in a way that most intent on having his students Meadowcreek David Orr, Sharon were on their way to becoming life- Carleton’s typically too-academic of- dissect the specific uses and produc- Kawolski’s partner Karen Thomp- long activists. This was the situation ferings just weren’t. Given my extra- tion of power by groups. Central to son, P-9 Local labor activist Jim then, when during that second Well- curricular interests, that is. In other his method of teaching this and other Guyette, Myles Horton, Paulo Freire, stone class I decided to give orga- words, I had real examples and real primary lessons was a reliance on Barry Commoner, and David Brower. nizing a try as a summer job. So the experiences against which I could history. This class was my first expo- That’s just off the top of my head– summer after my first year of college compare my classroom political edu- sure to American agrarian struggles there are others that I’m forgetting, I went to Des Moines, lodged with a cation. The problems faced by earlier in the 1890s, tales of Alinsky-style not to mention all the non-celebrity radical redneck (not a contradiction, agitators, organizers, and activists organizing, and an in-depth study of visiting lefties. The only conservative just very rare) who was drunk every were often similar to the issues I en- the Civil Rights Movement, and then speaker I can remember was James night, in a broken down old victorian countered while trying to gather and the student anti-war movement of Meredith, the Civil Rights Move- house that was bought from the city exercise grassroots power myself. So the Vietnam era. The class was also ment icon of desegregation who later for a dollar, and became an ACORN the education was three-fold: Paul’s a window into the lives and perspec- became a staffer for Jesse Helms. It organizer. I was assigned to organize teaching method first instructed stu- tives of a cross section of grassroots was a good time for education even a neighborhood appropriately called dents to clarify their thoughts and organizers, people invited by Paul to without Wellstone; I feel very lucky “the Bottoms.” values as a part of the political analy- lecture or lead discussions. None of to have caught that moment. Some sis, and then for those students who them were academics, which was a very few campuses are probaby still The specific areas in which Paul found themselves inspired to take ac- notable thing in the overly academic good for such concentrated expo- pushed me to reconsider my ideas tion, the lessons moved into the his- Carleton environment. The invited sure, Evergreen perhaps being one of were three, and can basically be torical and practical knowledge that classroom guests served a double them, but places like Carleton have phrased as the following questions: a working activist needs. Of course, it function: they allowed for Paul to be become much more mainstream as 1) What really is the political dimen- was in this second stage of education somewhere else–usually at a political tuition skyrocketed over the last ten sion of the environmental movement, that we learned that inspiration itself or activist group meeting or grass- or fifteen years.) and how radical can it get? 2) What, is a tried and tested political tool. roots campaign event. if any, is the relationship between At this point I should also say that all my ethnic identity and my political Most importantly, Paul completed (Also as an aside, and just to round this while I was gaining activist expe- views? And 3), historically, what was those two stages of the education in out the picture, I have to point out rience outside of the classroom. I was the particular contribution of student grassroots politics described above that when I was in college it must very involved in a number of student activists to the Civil Rights and anti- by supplying a third element: that of have been the high water mark for the political groups. Over my time in col- war movements and why? These are the practical example. Here is where Movement veterans lecture circuit. lege I contributed efforts to a whole pretty basic questions, and I feel that he was unique. I describe him as hav- Paul’s invited guest teachers made range of causes, including those that I’ve had them resolved for myself for ing been an experimental political their appearances in the context of a could then be termed in shorthand, many years, but I was eighteen and scientist. He didn’t just observe the full year’s worth of campus-wide ac- such as “Central America,” “sexual nineteen, trying to figure out my val- political landscape as pundit or theo- tivist/lefty speakers. Just to recall the harassment,” “divestment,” “old ues while at the same time trying to rist; he conducted actual experiments incredibly inspiring people I heard growth,” and others. For intermit- act on them. Paul was the first of my in the political arena. Knowing Paul speak while in college, either in an tent periods I definitely committed teachers to really push my thinking in and watching him later, when he was assembly hall or lecture room: Cesar more time, energy, and thought to ways that would directly impact my running his first campaign for the Chavez, Michael Harrington, Noam political activism than to my home- formation as a citizen. Senate, I realized that the campaign Chomsky, Angela Davis, the peace work–way more. Being politically itself was an experiment. If it worked, activist Brian Willson, AIM leader active and working to change things The main point here is that Paul’s he’d be in the Senate. If it didn’t, he’d Dennis Banks, ex-CIA agent-turned just seemed much more urgent than classes–especially the second write a book about it, and then use 48 Dear Laura, JRS Issue 9 49 the experience in his teaching. Hav- had friendly chats. That day he saw happened to coincide with Paul’s last On the level of grassroots activism, ing been provided an exposure to this me approaching, and before saying campaign, which as you know was also, I think we desperately need a experimental method, I and many of hi he yelled, “Dan, how about those hard fought. What I later learned refresher course on the Wellstone Paul’s students adopted a particular students in China? Aren’t they amaz- was that over the summer, as Mike’s approach. While I applaud the resur- kind of activist mode: historically-in- ing?! What do you think of them?” hold on reality ebbed day by day gent creativity of political artists and formed, thesis-positing, continually The guy was not a scholar of China, and the campaign became more and count myself as one of them, I also self-educating, and taking action in but was excited nonetheless, and more heated, Paul started phoning think we need to make our creativity the world. based on earlier conversations and Mike once everyday, no matter where available to those of the politically at least one paper, he knew that I’d he was, using the tight campaign as active who are actually making de- The marriage of political engage- be following what was going on. I re- an excuse to engage Mike, and try mands. Striking workers would be ment and intellectual inquiry makes call this episode because I remember to help keep his mind from becom- the obvious example, and a strike is so much sense to me that I often thinking even then that it was mind- ing irreversibly unhinged. That was perhaps still the only time when peo- wonder why more people don’t do ful and somehow considerate of him Paul Wellstone in a nutshell. Always ple wrest power in a really threaten- this kind of thing. I admit that politi- to remember my concerns, because looking out for others, even given ing way. By and large, the scenarios cal operatives (eg the James Carvilles I was not in anyway one of his clos- the huge demands on him. There where power comes up against power of the world) often use an action/ est students. And this was at the very are many other like-stories from the have basically been conceded by the evaluation process, but it is usually beginning of his Senate run–in fact, I Wellstone files. Although the above anti-war movement. The radical/ without deep history in mind. And was going to ask him about how that two are Carleton-related, I’m quite anarchist elements of the anti-glo- hardly any academic political scien- was proceeding when he preempted sure that the vast, overwhelming balization movement have stalled by tists do, including those few who take me with his excitement and curiosity majority of them are not. Which in fixating on ever more predictable and the progressive grassroots tradition about my take on the Tiananmen oc- itself is amazing when you consider ineffective street actions. We’ve let a as a starting point. Even more dis- cupation. But this was just like him. that he spent a good twenty years at whole range of progressive bench- appointingly, too few of my fellow Always thinking about the other per- Carleton—a place whose consider- marks be defended by the courts and grassroots political activists under- son’s concerns, and always wanting able inertial forces fall on the side of nothing else. In short, when it comes stand the approach. to feel the other person’s excitement. insularity. to strategy, today all leftist camps are guilty either of an ahistorical think- Anyway, I think you probably now Two: His closest campus collaborator There is much to say about how ing, or a total disregard for evalua- have at least some idea of what my was Mike Casper, a theoretical physi- still feel the influence today. On the tion, or a simple lack of courage. student experience with Paul Well- cist. The two of them had worked level of electoral strategy, I am re- stone was like, at least from the in- together on policy issues for years, minded almost everyday of how the On the personal level, I do feel a re- tellectual/activist side of things. It and when Paul went to Washington national Democrats still have not sponsibility to argue for an infusion is also important to say something Mike went with him to play the role learned the lessons of Paul’s first of intellectual activity into political here about the person, because Paul’s of advisor and sounding board, espe- Senate run. Obama has some of that activism. Beyond the specifics of my force of personality was also very cially on matters needing a science populist edge to him and again it is experience is also the larger motiva- much a part of the campus environ- background. He returned to North- proving successful. If the DNC can’t tion the memory of Paul inspires: ment, even apart from the politics. field to teach again after a couple of recognize the substance of Obama’s Whatever it takes, we have to do it. A couple of anecdotes serve to il- years. It was during the school year strategy (already far less leftist than Not because there is any great glory lustrate. One: when in the spring of of 2001–2002 that Mike suffered a Wellstone, especially in the area of in it, but for the far less glamorous 1989 the Chinese students occupied rapid neurological deterioration. The support for business) and force him reason that we are the only ones here. Tiananmen Square I one day ran into story was that he’d started the school to moderate his progressivism, then For that reason also, we might as well Paul. I took no more classes from year fine but so quick was the demen- they’ll have proven themselves ut- make it fun. him after those first two, and so only tia that he couldn’t finish teaching terly blind twice over. saw him irregularly, but we always his classes. This disease progression This letter is getting long, and is 50 Dear Laura, JRS Issue 9 51 starting to branch out into other dis- periods of historical transition, small your generous while as a reader, I cussions; I could spend a lot of time inputs create large outputs, mean- am curious about your thoughts and reworking it and adding parts, but I ing that small numbers of actors can experiences. Not just in response to do need to get on with other projects. disproportionately influence events. this correspondence (though that is I cannot think of an easy way to end This quarter to half century of course welcome), but on any other political the letter. Relating my updated politi- falls right on our adulthoods, so we topics, including your own political cal analyses is probably a good way are the ones who need to act in order education. If and when you ever get to ensure that this becomes a con- to ensure that the next system (which around to writing something, I will tinuing exchange rather than just me after becoming established exists in most certainly read it and respond. giving you a chapter in the story of a state of equilibrium for some time, my life. So: in the last couple of years until its internal contradictions tear it Sincerely, I’ve taken as my most profound in- apart) is more humane than our ex- DSW fluence the writings of Immanuel isting world. It is here that the influ- Wallerstein. He is the leading propo- ence of Critical Art Ensemble enters, nent of what is now called “world- especially in the notion of the wager. systems theory.” In short, Wallerstein Accepting Wallerstein’s argument of argues that capitalism is the present higher stakes still provides no direc- day system, and that from its ascen- tion as to what kind or manner of po- dence five centuries ago to its maturi- litical action is best. CAE argues that ty in the last hundred years, it became guarantees cannot be had, and that the first system to entirely encircle any move is essentially a gamble giv- the globe. In the process, the man- en that we live in the age of unintend- agement of capitalism emerged as the ed consequences. All that I learned basis for most conflict in the world. from Paul Wellstone, then, becomes As all systems do, this one will end, even more important if we are not to and he argues that we are witnessing gamble blindly, but rather play the the end of it right now, as well as the smart odds. That’s about where I’m simultaneous emergence of the next at, in big picture terms. Any particu- system. The next system is as yet of an lar issue or problem is a whole other open-ended nature. We know what it conversation. won’t be (eg monarchist), but know not what it will. That said, we also I hope some of this has made sense, know that it could be something even and that it has not been too boring to worse than what we’ve had for the read. It certainly has not been boring last century, because we’ve already to write, though parts are frustrat- seen glimmerings of rising forces that ing for me to re-read because I just could potentially dominate a succes- haven’t had the time and full atten- sor system (like fundamentalisms). tion to relate the whole complexity The nature of the emerging system of what I want to say. For example, is in significant part determined in a full Wellstone-Obama comparison its emergence, which according to is warranted, but just didn’t happen. Wallerstein’s analyses usually lasts But that’s okay. In time. Of course, twenty-five to fifty years. In these now that I have taken advantage of 52 JRS Issue 9 JRS Issue 9 53

VI They urged us to appear, with us, not from around us. The gather- the opening lines of a speech given by ratios of up to 8 to 1 against us, ing to which he was so offended by, UC Berkeley student activist Mario Flatlands: and with our opponents being and was opting out of, proposed a Savio: such individuals as the editor convergence in the green spaces of Non-Hierarchical of the National Guardian, the the university wherein academics “This is going to be a very differ- international secretary of the Du would meet and share an intellectual ent style speech from the speeches Space and its Uses Bois Clubs, the [San Francisco] platform with comedians, pediatri- which we’ve been listening to, be- Mime Troupe, and assorted jazz cians, actors, Zen theologian’s, rock cause I don’t have a very set idea just Sam Gould singers. musicians, writers, clowns. This was how history’s going to turn out, nor to occur—did occur—over the week- what brought it to be the way it is Living Within Our Can we be blamed if we did not want end of the 21st, May 1965. Tens of right now, nor how we are going to Histories: The Past is to lend our names and reputations thousands gathered and shared their change it, if we are going to. So, all I Ahead of Us to that effort? views and assessments of US policy really have is a lot of questions, and as it pertained to the war in South I hope they are questions similar to As is so often the case, we will be- This travesty should be repudiated East Asia. Speakers spoke. Groups ones that have been troubling other gin by looking behind us. Who is in by all true scholars irrespective of converged. Discussion took place. people who are here. Maybe if we can charge? Where to look towards for their views on Vietnam. It can only Opinions were shared, opinions at least get our questions out in the authority? These were the questions damage the reputation of Berkeley formed, and dispersed as the crowds open we can begin to talk about the then as they are now. as an institution of higher learning. appeared and dissolved. For those answers.” who could not attend in person, the The May 2 1 meeting on the —Professor Robert A. Scalapino proceedings were broadcast over Let us deconstruct this statement Berkeley campus is symbolic of the KPFA—America’s first “public” for a moment outside of the histori- new anti-intellectualism that is radio station—throughout the San cal context of its time, away from its gaining strength today. As seen by some the problem was dis- Francisco Bay Area. association with Vietnam, and solely persion, flattening: of roles, of space, within the context of a space for A few individuals, most of whom of knowledge and, of course, author- And while there was a stage in place learning wherever it may reside. would not dream of treating their ity, the hierarchy we so often accept for speakers to voice their opinions, own disciplines in this cavalier as the basis for learning. Prof. Scala- while there were the usual trappings “…I don’t have a very set idea just fashion, have sponsored a rigged pino, then of the University of Cali- of protest oratory and public lectur- how history’s going to turn out… meeting in which various ideologies fornia, Berkeley, released the above ing, what strikes me as most invigo- how we are going to change it… if we and entertainers are going to statement a number of days before rating when considering the frame- are going to.” enlighten us on Vietnam. the gathering that went by the name work constructed by the organizers of Vietnam Day was to take place. of Vietnam Day, what seems to me Does one ever? In reading these Only a handful of the performers Evidently, at least from my reading of most capable of actually creating words I am struck by their simplic- have ever been to Vietnam or made his statement of refusal, what both- democratic, pan-authoritative space, ity, and equally as forcefully by any serious study of its problems. ered him most was not the politics of was the encouragement of a zone of how infrequently they are voiced in The objective is propaganda, not the event, but that the event itself was questioning; a leveling of authority, public, outside of our own internal knowledge. being defined not as protest, but as and a flattening of the roles of partic- conversations. What is remarkable pedagogy. ipants to the very essence of why they about this statement, and possibly To lend some respectability to the were converging in the first place. what struck those in opposition to performance, the organizers sought Scalapino’s sentiment then, as now, is An appeal for this sort of question- the gathering (arguably the first to give a few of us “guerilla” status not at all unusual. So many of us ex- ing space was aptly addressed at the ever to be self-defined as a Teach- in the show. pect to receive knowledge from above very start of the convergence, within In), was that it turned the position 54 Flatlands: Non-Hierarchical Space and its Uses JRS Issue 9 55 of authoritative—maybe we should that seems to agitate people. Espe- consider those hierarchies and what once brought you somewhere, but say omniscient—learning on its cially when it concerns topics that sort of educational space might result wherein that somewhere is now long head. Soothsayer be damned! Death veer towards the political and its so- from their leveling. forgotten. From Tacoma you head to those that presume to predict the cial implications. It’s easy to consider northwest, past Gig Harbor, and future! What is radically divergent educational space de-politicized, a Again, we’ll look behind us. over the Purdy Bridge at Henderson from the expected in Savio’s ad- blank canvas. But it never is. Wheth- Bay. Home, Washington even today, dress is the call for the creation of er the curriculum is discussing a war George Allen, B.F. O’Dell, Oliver is not easy to get to. Located on the educational space in which we divest in Asia, or one within the Middle Verity and their families watched Key Peninsula off Von Geldern Cove, ourselves of the belief that anyone— East, how to make a Paper Mache Glennis dissolve through bickering, Home is an isolated community nes- teacher, lecturer, politician, priest, or sculpture, or how to work through and snipping. A venture whose aim tled off the pockets that form The parent—knows what is coming ahead the Pythagorean Theorem, the space was Anarchistic in nature meandered Salish Sea (the regional terminology of us. The statement eradicates the in which that knowledge is being into an experiment that adopted rule for the connective waterways that are notion that learning is about facts, transferred, and most importantly, after rule in the hope that regulation, the Strait of Georgia to the north by and states plain that it is, so often, a the means in which that transfer oc- at least for some, would ensure its Victoria, Canada, the Strait of Juan space for questions and the forming curs, is inherently of a political na- survival. It did not. de Fuca, and the Puget Sound to of opinion and belief. In turn what ture. This is especially true when you the south near Olympia, Washing- is created is a knowledge comprised begin to consider how we internalize “The desire of the many at Glennis ton). Arguably these off the beaten of people, and as it might have been the roles, methods, and environments to make by-laws restricting others path, isolated qualities had much to considered by William James, their in which this learning takes place. from doing things that in reality were do with Home’s founding in 1896. shared affections. This is not to say The Greek philosopher and math- private matters, causing so many Sometimes people just want to be left that one can’t hold firmly to their ematician Pythagoras and his school meetings which were noisy and bred to do their own thing. Sometimes, beliefs, but when appreciating theory, were so feared by the powers that be inharmony from the diversified views they desire that others join them. In when formulating a response to the in Greece that they began to go into of what should be done, not only the case of Home, it was a little of world around us and in the dimly caves to do their math equations un- made us lose interest in the meetings, both. A confliction I find invigorat- viewed distance, the best we can do derground. Pythagoras was eventu- but finally disgusted us at the wran- ing, and inspiring. is observe, discuss, consider, and then ally assassinated for his teachings. gles and disputes over petty matters.” throw caution to the wind. What we Ironically his theorem is some of the normally encounter is that we are only math I have total recall of from In regard to the first decade of Home, After the failure of Glennis Allen, buoyed by the weight of our shared my school years. Washington, the nominally anarchist, O’Dell, and Verity set it upon them- affections, our mutually constructed free-love colony, Oliver Verity’s rec- selves to create something different. knowledge reality. But in the best of It should, of course, be evident that ollection of Glennis, his previous at- Having nearly lost their shirts in their times we go further. Our thoughts to say that all educational space is tempt at ideological living, provides a prior venture, the three men hand- become fluid, and that knowledge political doesn’t mean that all edu- crystalline view of the Mutual Home crafted a boat and set-off into The reality is suddenly drifting and per- cational space is conservative, or Association he would help found in Salish from Tacoma. They found meable. It is then that we scatter our rightwing, or left-wing for the matter. its ashes in reverse. what they were looking for at Joe’s ashes over the side of the boat that is What it does mean is that all educa- Bay; it’s said, named after a drunk- our schoolhouse, hoping that our un- tional space exists within a system of Your quickest route, whether you en fisherman who fell off his boat derstanding of the waters in which we hierarchies of varying degrees, vol- are coming from Seattle, Portland, and drowned in the shallow waters sail directs the remnants of our body umes, and colorings. Within every or nearly anywhere east of the Olym- around which the group chose to start of knowledge on the right course. space, irregardless of political ideol- pic National Forest, is to take I-5. their proposal over again. Home was ogy, these hierarchies are constantly Otherwise you’re on backwoods, going to be radically divergent from Where, how, and with whom are we in motion, some with a greater ve- single-lane roads throughout your what occurred at Glennis, and for the supposed to learn? This is a question locity than others. My interest is to trip that weave along routes which most part in the years leading up to 56 Flatlands: Non-Hierarchical Space and its Uses JRS Issue 9 57 the First World War it was. The men and resolve problems large and off-limits, and the people of Home of every threat from the outside bought an initial twenty-six acres of small in a fluid, de-constructed, and showed up to listen when people world in reaction to the assassina- land, and began to clear it. From the I would argue, inherently pragmatic, came through to speak, respectfully, tion of President McKinley to reac- three families that first disembarked fashion. This free-floating and mind- however their social or political ide- tions against publications printed at at Joe’s Bay on the 10th of February ful commitment to dialogue colored ologies might collide with the points Home, in defense of every machina- 1896 and went on to form the Mutual the area and its inhabitants. To some of view being stated. tion from the state, as when under Home Association, to 1901 when like-minded persons outside of Home the Comstock Act Home’s post office the Association plotted land for the it colored its reputation as well. The people of Home stuck to them- was taken from them in an attempt first time at two hundred and seven- selves. They rarely ventured outside to curb the dissemination of their teen acres, eighty-five others arrived Liberty Hall, a large barn-like struc- of the community as they settled at “obscene” publications, the people that found comfort in a space that ture that burned down and was re- Home specifically to make a place for of Home moved forward. They cre- encouraged, as George Allen stated, built on three occasions, was Home’s themselves separate from what they ated a space that made sense to a space wherein they could, “live as defacto town center. It served as viewed as the failings of the outside them, where people came and went near their ideals as is possible.” an ad-hoc learning site for the ar- world. But word got out; in the form freely, out of geography and ideol- eas children, as well as a site for of rumor, as well as through the doz- ogy by equal measure. They created a From this point forward I’d like you dances, and the many lectures that ens of publications and periodicals space they appreciated, and benefited to alter your vision. Consider every- took place at Home by its residents, printed at Home over the years. Dis- from. They created for themselves thing I am about to tell you within as well as those visiting or travel- content, Clothed with the Sun, Dis- at Home, building upon it new ele- one frame: a schoolhouse. The inter- ing through on west coast speaking sent, New Era, My Century Plant, ments each day. It was of their own actions, the landscape, the consider- tours, such as Big Bill Haywood, the Demonstrator, and the Agitator making. And it was, also, in no way ations, and intangibilities, the people: Emma Goldman, Elizabeth Gurley were some of those publications, and a utopia. Home was like any other we’ll view the entity, the planned Flynn, and William Z. Foster. Or for they served to disseminate Home’s planned community, full of bickering, community that was Home, as not as that matter local clergy like Tacoma views out into the world at large, far arguing, and ill-tempered reactions a statement of purpose, not as an ex- Evangelical Lutheran minister, John afield from the isolated Key Penin- from some sectors of the community plicit ideology, but as a question em- F. Doescher, who spent a number of sula hamlet to major American pro- against others. But what continually bodied, a consideration given terrain. days in Home speaking with associa- gressive hotbeds like Chicago (where draws me back to the history of the tion members, as well as giving lec- writer, printer, and IWW organizer colony, and what separates it from so Full of Vegetarians, Communists, tures on Christianity, a topic of little Jay Fox lived; later to be a long-time many of the other countless histories Theosophists, Anarchists, Socialists, interest to Home’s residents, as there resident of the colony), New York of cooperative, planned, communal, Nudist, those that just wanted to be were no churches, or any other reli- City, and San Francisco, not to men- or intentional communities—what- left to themselves and adhered to no gious meeting sites, in the area. There tion Seattle, and especially Tacoma, ever name they may fall under—is ideology, as well as the occasional were certainly no plans to build any whose residents ceaselessly argued that Home shares many of the same traveling hirsute cross-dresser, Home either. Despite these convictions visi- over whether to raid the community qualities of Vietnam Day and similar aspired to a methodology of open- tors with divergent views, such as and “exterminate the nest of vipers” haphazard ventures, in that it was an ness; from the way that the associa- Doescher, were not at all uncommon in their midst. Through bravery and open space, full of questions, ready tions members allowed each other to and were, in fact, welcomed. Liberty subterfuge ferry captain Ed Lorenz to be confused by them, even invigo- live their lives, to their views on edu- Hall was an open platform. Anyone saved the residents of Home on a rated by them. Home did not have cation, government, and sociality in who walked off the dock as Joe’s handful of occasions from Tacomites answers and reveled in that fact. It full. With no government or town Bay was encouraged to use it as their with brickbats and bad intentions. celebrated its horizontality, its flat- council in place, and no police or soapbox to espouse their affections ness, its chaos. It basked in the fog, any other individual to enforce laws, in anarchism, free love, nudism, com- Throughout the internal struggles happily reaching out for more ques- Home was invigorated by a vital and munism, or in the case of the Tacoma and inevitable miscommunications tions and compatriots. tangible need to consider, discuss, minister, religion. No topics were of the colony’s residents, in the face 58 Flatlands: Non-Hierarchical Space and its Uses JRS Issue 9 59

Though she visited her friend Gertie that I find stifling. It has a suffocat- residents, court documents, facsimi- and non-expert alike, energizes. So, Vose on a number of occasion at ing effect that we have all, at one time les of publications like Discontent while encouraging this horizontality Home, was much loved and admired or another, encountered, in school, and New Era, and oral histories form in educational frameworks I do not by the community, and, as mentioned, church, government, and all societ- a composition of Home that cannot want to insinuate that we all need to even gave a series of lectures there, ies tropes from our sexuality to our be found in any book that attempts lessen our scope, flatten our desires, Emma Goldman was highly critical culinary habits. It is also, in regard to create a linear account of its his- or our expertise. My concerns don’t of the colony. She considered Home to these two histories and their ante- tory. The meticulous chaos of the reside in a leveling or dismantling of to be hiding in the woods, away from cedents, a dramatic misconception of binders, filled with countless points discipline, of craft. My concerns re- the fight, and not critically engaging the benefits and power of both plat- of view all obscured through time, side within an interest of, and direct the problems of the world firsthand. forms. I would argue that, in truth, paint the truest picture of Home I experience with, the benefit of plat- In this I disagree with Goldman. Her the seemingly lackluster familiarity have ever come across. Retherford forms that liberate and are generated accusations strike me as conserva- the irked Scalapino and Goldman conducted a number of oral histories by, however indirectly or obliquely, tive and hierarchical as those of Prof. was a mask that they mistook for the of the aging children of Home’s first our disciplines, crafts, and well-de- Scalapino, who viewed the actions of real thing. residents—Retherford’s parent’s gen- fined skills. As with the examples of Jerry Rubin, Stephen Smale, and the eration. Again and again a common Home, and the Vietnam Day Teach- other organizers of the Vietnam Day The Key Peninsula Public Library, assessment connects their stories, in, the platforms that interest me ex- Teach-In as frivolous at best, asinine a squat, single level building from and that is that Home itself was less ist in flux. They are moving, applied and potentially dangerous at worst, the early nineteen eighties, shares an anarchist compound, or haven by will and desire, and live in con- a breaking down of the hierarchy its parking lot with a church thrift for free-lover’s, than a site of learn- tinuous conversation with their more that allowed people like Scalapino to store, and a deli. Across the street, ing. The dock, the houses, the fields, rigid counterparts. determine who was a legitimate au- another thrift store and a Mexican the rivers, and most importantly thority on the Vietnam War, and con- restaurant reside. Apart from the the people, were the true and active In re-telling the above histories in tinues to allow the government to de- post office down the road (which schoolhouse. Everyone asked ques- brief, and framing them specifically termine who is expendable enough to the federal government allowed re- tions. Everyone felt the authority to within a context of, not simply edu- send off to war. Goldman’s belief that turned to Home in the nineteen fif- speak. The reoccurring assessment cation, but pedagogy, my desire is to Home was inconsequential to the ties) there is not much else. There is from the children of Home was that promote a view of education that is anarchist cause speaks loudly to her woods and water. Sylvia Retherford, everyone was a student, and everyone plural and positively haphazard. A own internalize beliefs in this same granddaughter of George Allen, has was a teacher. view that eschews dogma, and opens system of quantitative authority. Her taken upon herself the role of Home’s up the quotidian, our day-to-day views constrict all action to the bar- historian. When you go to Home to- Against “Utopia”: lives, as schoolhouses. But, with this ricades and view all participants as day you are, in the truest sense of any The Platform is in mind, Home and Vietnam Day, soldiers, just as Scalapino restricts all utopic apparition, nowhere. In the the Pedagogy along with countless other examples sites of learning to the classroom as backroom of the library, high up on a (some of which I will bring up later we have come to recognize it; black- shelf that the librarians need to reach I should make it clear that I don’t on within this text) apply a method- board, rows of chairs, and a large by bringing one of those circular believe everyone to be an expert, an ology to their mindfulness. They al- desk up front where someone will to step-stools over to, reside seven black authority. Stupid people exist and low themselves the opportunity to speak to you, not with you. Each of binders. The binders contain, what I I am surrounded by them. Admit- loosely frame the everyday in a way these points of view is highly quan- imagine to be, only a small sample tedly I often fall into the camp as that allows the anarchic, the chaotic, titative, vertical. They see numbers, of the research Retherford has con- one of those stupid people. All of us to be a generative force towards col- limits, goals, and levels of achieve- ducted over the years concerning do. But we do all have something to lective knowledge gathering, shaping, ment. They see an enemy on the the site that her grandfather helped share, however enlightened, however and the application of a Realnarra- horizon. They are absolute. It is this create. Photos, news clippings, self- asinine. Our very engagement in a tive or Pragmatic Utopianism over single-mindedness, this absolutism, published memoirs from early colony fine-tuned pedagogical space, expert the dew-eyed fabulists searching 60 Flatlands: Non-Hierarchical Space and its Uses JRS Issue 9 61 for tomorrow. There is, I’ll admit, absolutism, as with all singularities for this inquiry is too limited to ex- outward culture—differ from what a kind of sadness to this approach. and dogma’s, is a crutch as much as it pect to find the answer we are look- it is now had I been provided with a A sadness that I find empowering. is a cage for those it ensnares. These ing for. We expect to find the solu- more expansive explanation of how Call me maudlin. It is an application spaces do not represent the future as tions—if there are solutions at al—in one can experience learning? What of utopic thought with its roots laid I wish to see it. They represent what a one room, in one four-year period if I was asked to consider more se- bare. As the critic and educator Ste- utopia can do best. They act as a ve- at a university, in one seminar. The riously the possibility that learning phen Duncombe states so thought- hicle. They act as a No Place, a non- educational flatlands that I wish to and learning environments existed all fully, Thomas More’s use of the word place, which we may only reside in discuss do not represent an alterna- around me, rather than what I was Utopia is pointed and powerful. In temporarily, and in which we imag- tive to our more normative educa- really being told; that all outward (ie; using a word to describe the place ine how to change the Someplace tional platforms. They represent a out of the classroom) learning was in of our dreams, whose very definition that we all inhabit. In this sense, the parallel platform, not oppositional, service to The School and not of the in the Greek, means Nowhere, More structures that interest me, and the but in consort. A means of creating school itself? calls into question whether we can further examples that I will bring up, a mirror area, divided thinly by a ever reach that Never-Never Land at use this shifting, foggy platform as permeable skin, situated as such to As soon as I was over eighteen, and all. But as Duncombe states, More’s their pedagogy. Their existence as a relieve the pressure building. Passing the disaffection appeared to be too conceit can be viewed as generative self-defined field of action, as a space through at the moment when needed. much to bother with, I severed ties in nature. We are not imagining what for questioning, allows whatever may Filling the other when dry. These flat- and (unconsciously for quite a while) we already know, or for that matter, occur within them to be part of the lands are outlets, playing fields, areas began to look for a new educational what we can’t know at all. In search- educational construct. In my time of action. They are hidden in plane life for myself. My education came ing for our utopic ideals we are em- constructing these types of platforms sight, seemingly something they are in the form of working in bookshops boldened to imagine what we are I’ve noticed a number of method- not, playing games. They are masks. and video stores, in periods of itiner- vaguely familial with, our dreams ological tools that help to enliven They are the multitude. ancy, in forming, loosing, and main- just out of grasp. And, in this sense, these ventures, and make them visible taining friendships, in drinking, in our utopia’s, while always just out of to the world outside. The School of Lived being upset with my drinking habits, reach, are vehicles which empower us Experience: in taking hallucinogenic substances to move forward, and drives us di- Before we gets to those points it is, Flatlands in Action both organic and manmade, in play- rectly into spaces we hadn’t imagined again, important to stress the point; ing and listening to music, in talking we’d ever reach, though we knew all education is political. It is political My own education began flawed, endlessly, in listening, in looking, in they most certainly existed. But, and in that within our normative educa- fragmented. This had as such do with searching through antique shops and here is the most important part, they tional systems we set standards that genetic disposition as it did with insti- thrift stores, In writing film scripts, in are never, ever, the spaces in which are quantifiable and pre-determined, tutional rigidity. I was often uncom- writing bad angst-saturated poetry, we want to stay. The creation of uto- rather than qualitative and expan- fortable in school, not sure where I fit in making films with friends, in driv- pia is always temporary, always in sive. When we decide that the site in. I was afraid to offer the wrong an- ing cross-country and in doing it over flux. Here in lies its strength, not its where we learn and methods that we swer. I was stubborn and also scared. again and again, in having sex and not weakness. teach with are to determine a desti- I often wonder what life I might be having sex, in bad relationships and nation for our goals we negate the living had I experienced school dif- then a good one which has lasted, in Like Duncombe’s understanding of true strength of an educational plat- ferently. Not in opposition, not in exercise, in considering the death of More’s Utopia, the platforms that form. We call upon our schools as fear. Sunday evenings frightened me. others, in considering the death that I wish to call out into the light, and sites to solve problems, rather than others live with, in looking through the methodologies that enliven them, areas in which we begin to ask the In what way would my educational bookstores, the bookshelves of others do not represent an educational questions that will lead towards in- experience—and my life experience in living rooms, bedrooms, hallways, goal. They are a space to consider sight elsewhere. We wait for answers. as well, as so much of primary school basements, in buying books, feeling what could be, but isn’t. Educational The time and space which we allow is geared towards assimilating us into books, searching for books, stealing 62 Flatlands: Non-Hierarchical Space and its Uses JRS Issue 9 63 books from shops I worked at, in jus- trying to come to terms with their other forms of public pronounce- histories like Home and Vietnam tifying the theft of those books and complicity in actions they abhor, in ments), as well, histories began to Day and beginning to find a means in time questioning that justification recognizing my own complicity, in take on the roll of narrative vehicle, for myself to redefine their given nar- yet not returning those books which finding ways to manifest these expe- a means of engagement. History be- ratives, a work-set, a method, began I stole, in getting into fistfights and riences and not sublimate them, in came a medium in itself, rather than to take shape. By doing work myself, questioning how those brawls began, finding ways to examine them with merely subject matter. In the end, creating my own education in public, in confronting my anger, my depres- honesty and criticality in public and all the material and experience that failing, succeeding, and continuing sion, and my sudden periods of over- in private, in creating media and ac- helped to inspire me to write scripts on, I began to consider and more whelming happiness, in fatherhood tion and movement, art, that brings and to make films and photographs - fully realize these methodologies. I and the bond with my children that to light these experiences and speaks the books, the movies, the music, the also began to see them as a reoccur- I fall short at being able to explain to of them as replicas of the experiences friendships, the cities I have lived in, ring (possibly unconscious) method- anyone, in the study of history, in the of others, in celebration of contradic- my life in general - began to be played ology in the work of contemporaries study of the uses of the past, in the tory expectations of our public and out in public as the work. The process I admired. At first I didn’t see this study of the prostitution of our past, private selves. in which I went to refine my life expe- practice being in line with education, in taking hikes and learning to be rience, my education, into films and at least not overtly. At time went on, absorbed by the landscape, in cook- Roughly ten years ago, around the photographs became a practice in and more and more projects of a ing, in eating, in thinking about the turn of the century, a shift in my prac- and of itself. All the extraneous mate- discursive, collaborative, and medi- food I eat, in searching for the best tice began to take shape. Through rials that make up our lives, and what ated nature began to take shape, the taco trucks in whatever city I may change of environment, and econom- inspires us to continue, to move on, idea that what was occurring was be in, in searching through record ics, as well as affections, my work to make things, and make things of an educational platform, possibly a shops, in finding old vinyl, in learn- began to dematerialize. The discur- ourselves, became the work. It wasn’t pedagogic one, became more evident. ing through the skills, lived experi- sive elements that often stayed in the until I began to meet so many friends In the most fluid work, in the work ence, flaws, and grace of others, in planning stages, in the background, and colleagues with BA’s, MFA’s, that seemed open most honestly for seeking out people who are devoted, began to take the foreground. It and PhD’s, that I began to examine questioning, a pattern began to de- to music, ecstasy, energy, writing, po- seemed, as the majority of my work the means in which I gained my own velop. Four main operating strategies etry, film, food, fucking, nature, po- up till that point was centered in film education, away from these institu- seemed to consistently reoccur. I de- litical action, a sense of honesty, be- and photography, that the set, the tions that they inhabited. As I would fine them as: ing humane, being pragmatic, being script, the actors, were breaking time. so often be asked where I went to contradictory, in the work of others, The elements that were supposed to school, where I studied, and respond Clear Frames in how the work of others operates, be captured and made finite in films that I was a college drop-out, with (read; legible environments which how it moves, how it interacts, in the and photographs were let loose and barely a credit to my transcript, I in- describes their own uses and tools language that they use, in how the given the ability to expand. Without creasingly was asked, and began to and the context in which to break language expands or retracts from the money to afford film stock, the ask myself, how I became interested them) the experience, in how the language extraneous nature of production be- in the things I do, and inevitably, how helps to create narrative in consort came the medium itself. Content was I became the person I am without an Horizontal Space with the world, in confronting the in- overshadowed by context. As time educational degree that made me into (read; flattened roles of authority/ tersection of politics, geography, and progressed the rough edges and hap- the person I am. These are, of course, authorship) time, in living through war, in walk- hazardness of this early dematerial- questions we all ask ourselves. I am ing through the invisibility of war at ization shifted further away from its thankful that, to some to degree, it is Generative Action home, in encountering the visibility associations with film to incorporate my job to do so. (read; individual and collective of war through the lives of veterans, other forms of media (records, pub- speech/activities which has the through the lives of refugees, rape lications of many sorts, the internet, Over time, by watching the work of power to exit and grow outside of victims, through living with veterans radio, the telephone, posters and others, by looking and examining the space created for it ) 64 Flatlands: Non-Hierarchical Space and its Uses JRS Issue 9 65

distance from where they situated area that is not the politics in question, era moved into the anti-Vietnam Ephemeral Distance themselves. From the top down you but of the politics in question. A War era the VDC had a foggy sense (read; action, speech, and gesture only get one angle. space that forces you to act out your of purpose, in as much that, unlike that consistently considers inter- In truth, what is being created, ideals, rather than one that massages other organizations it was more free- nalization over externalization) while parasitically adopting the them. These sites are not there to act flowing, reveled in improvisation, ag- frameworks and tropes of quotidian as the thing they are speaking of, or itation, and theatre. In this sense, the Eluding familiarity, is not what it seems. The even be them, but act as a means to VDC was gleefully able to take many Normalization: familiar is used as a guise to lure question that very thing, within the aspects of both street level commu- The Shape of Things those to the entrance, to provide a firm belief and commitment that nity organizing (Saul Alinksky and to Come setting comfortable to those who without that space for questioning, the Industrial Areas Foundation), might not normally enter into the without allowing yourself to step into earlier twentieth century labor radi- What are you seeing? Where am I agreement that they will soon find the fog, you are no better than the calism (Frank Little, Bill Haywood, asking you to enter? The points that themselves in. In a very real way, the thing you are attempting to critique. and the International Workers of the I stated above—Clear Frames, Hori- ventures that interest me use familiar The theatre of it is that the critique World), along with the inspiration zontal Space, Generative Action, and tropes as vehicles for half-assed exists within itself. Cyclical, these for so many of the activist/organiz- Ephemeral Distance—are attributes subterfuge. They are not hiding, but platforms feed on one another, shape- ers of the late-sixties, the campaigns in a startling degree of platforms that they are not plainly visible for what shifting, evolving and devolving at of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. often are seemingly disparate from they are. As Matthew Stadler states will and moment. They are what and the Southern Christian Leader- one another. Equally as often, in at in his essay Depth Perception, in is made of them, not the other way ship Conference, the Student Non- least some more normative, some regard to platforms like those I have around. To be more precise, they do violent Coordinating Committee, would same legitimate or rarified, found myself trafficking in over the not exist without what occurs within and countless other individuals and circles these platforms are seen as last decade, they “are more akin to them by the effort and interest of organizations. Throw in a healthy ineffectual and haphazard. I couldn’t drag acts, wherein the proposition those who active them, and possibly appreciation of what the San Fran- disagree more. My disagreement is sufficient in itself, a moment when even without those who critique their cisco Mimi Troupe (later to splinter stems from my belief that the detrac- you become, as Charles Ludlum said, efficacy. They are, to their core, a and form The Diggers) was doing in tors of such ventures have applied the ‘a living mockery of your own ideals’ question materialized. regard to political street theatre, and wrong set of measurements towards (adding, ‘if not, you’ve set your the VDC was a kaleidoscope of influ- success, and seen these ventures not ideals too low’).” My understanding Allow me again to rewind as an effort ences. It was also, it should be stated, for what they are, but for what they of Ludlum, and in turn Stadler, is to move us forward. a group of privilege, and this very pretend to be. They mistake the drag that the seeming state of disarray, the privilege colored its actions and or- queen for a “real” lady and then be- anarchic qualities of non-authority, After the Vietnam Day Teach-In at ganizing methods. Decidedly middle- gin to chastise her for the outlandish and perceived inconsequentialness of Berkeley a group of current and for- class, and white, the VDC—like so means in which she dresses herself. such platforms, the general “fakery” mer students, and others went on to many anti-war factions to come after What the detractors of these plat- of it all, in the face of deeply and found the Vietnam Day Committee it—expected to get what it desired. It forms, whether we are discussing the honestly felt politics, strikes as of a (VDC). The group, while maintain- was the politicized love-child of the art work of groups such as my own cop out, possibly a fuck you to go ing some of its authoritative roots civil rights movement and American within Red76, or that of The Center along with it. Plainly, it asks, “if you within the higher education system it consumer culture broken free of the for Tactical Magic, or the two ex- were serious about your intentions sprang from was, like the event that university and let loose in the streets. amples of Home, Washington and wouldn’t you try harder?” And inspired its existence, seemingly one Vietnam Day which I have continu- therein lies the con. In providing a thing, while decidedly something In its short existence the VDC ously called upon within this text, space that calls into question belief, else. Unlike many of the protest or- brought a lot of trouble into its or- miss is that what they see is not what that celebrates doubt along side ganizations popping up around the bit. But, again, that’s not what in- they get. At least not from the critical conviction, you find an inter-zone, an country as the so-called Civil Rights terests me the most. As a means of 66 Flatlands: Non-Hierarchical Space and its Uses JRS Issue 9 67 dispersing its message—end the Storefront as fragmented, masking your activity in assume. This dismantling starts out war NOW—in as many ways as Flat-Site; Assembling a wrapper that is, if not appealing, at from a central bank of energy and possible the group had a unique and Our Wardrobe least known to them is helpful and knowledge and, however quickly, highly affective open-door office pol- pragmatic. We need to be eased into begins deflating, and flattening, that icy. Anyone could enter during office In a very haphazard fashion we be- things we are not looking for. In this energy, creating a Horizontal Space hours. The VDC offices were pro- gan to clear out the space. Halfway we feel a sense of ownership, however for activity, movement, legibility, and moted as a public space. Once inside between a punk house and a copy fleeting. These proprietary emotions collaborative (not necessarily collec- there was nearly always a refrigera- shop we opened the VDC Copy Cen- do not form and bond immediately. tive) authorship. But what happens tor full of beer, free to take. As well, ter and made it look from the outside Without a strong leveling of author- once you have entered this space? anyone was free to utilize the group’s to be Open for Business. Or, as one of ship and authority, without a feel- Where does that energy, once leveled mimeograph machine to make post- the advertisements we made for the ing that ones voice is not only being out, disperse? ers for their band, free kitten, lost project stated, “Open, for Anything.” heard, but valued, a sense of place dog, roommate wanted, or motor- What that business might have been and collective ownership cannot, will When I talk about Generative Action cycle for sale. The only requirement was anybodies guess. Ratty couch- not, be achieved. In that sense these I want you to think of any meeting for those using the mimeograph was es, a coffeemaker you might find in Clear Frames serve solely as an en- you might have ever gone to, any po- that every sheet of paper leaving the a freshman dorm room, standing trance point, an introduction, into a litical rally, any band practice. How VDC offices was to be stamped with lamps, a photocopier, and random place that seems like one you know, often have we left, no matter how a VDC logo. You then find, in effect, office supplies outfitted the space as yet is not. That divide is the initial interesting the people in attendance, thousands of posters, all around the we began. However wayward, it’s space for questioning, and serves as no matter how talented, or even in- Berkeley area, advocating for the end here that you find your Clear Frame. the first step towards creating a site spiring, those in attendance may be, of the war in Vietnam. Free Kitten Setting up within a storefront, mask- that aims at being a holistic discur- no matter how pertinent the topic at posters, fliers looking for new room- ing ourselves as a business (though sive environment. hand, no matter how much action in mates, all speaking-out again the war. one that would likely fail; “Who are regard to the matter was needed, feel- these guys kidding? They’re gonna The typical response to the question ing that things were going nowhere - In the winter of 2008 the collabora- have to try harder if they wanna “who’s in charge” when entering The fast. Despite the level of energy with- tive art practice I take part in, Red76, make a buck in this economy.”), we Digger Free Store in San Francisco in the room, once the participants drew inspiration from both the peda- masked ourselves in a space that was was “you are!” While Red76 is not exited the space, the power went out, gogical history of Vietnam Day, as understandable to the world that so cavalier and brazen as The Dig- the world outside resembling a pow- well as the office policy of the group walked by it. It’s important to state gers were, the sentiment remained, er outage without any of the cama- it spawned, to stage Franklin’s VDC that these are clear, and not strong, nominally, the same. I say nominally raderie, sense of fun, or, if you will, Copy Center. At the invitation of the frames. A clear, yet fragile, structure for good reason. At the VDC, as with electricity that so often comes with a Bureau for Open Culture the project is key. If the VDC looked like a plain all projects of this nature, the goal is failure of that sort. It is exactly then, was temporarily situated in a vacant old smoothly running copy shop we to create a fluid and active space to in these spaces of failure, when we storefront on High Street in Colum- would only get people who wanted flatten all levels of authority and au- should walk outside, and with a deep, bus, Ohio. I will use this project, as it to make copies. By creating a space thorship. But, in a seemingly contra- rich, resounding irony, feel more en- was inspired by a history I have con- that at once signified a copy shop, dictory manner, a central figure that ergized than when before we entered tinuously referred to within this text, but a really terrible one, we began guides activity, and facilitates move- the space. It is within these spaces of as an example of the implementation to pose a question, as well as an in- ment, in a continuing effort to divest failure wherein we learn how to re- of these horizontal educational spac- vitation to ask, “what is this?” And themselves of that centrality from the store, how to work together. In these es in action. with this, once inside, things change. start, is imperative. In this sense, we spaces that interest me, these spaces In this, familiarity plays a vital role. do not find ourselves dismantling au- of failure (which they most certainly When asking strangers to enter into a thority all together, right as one walks are! They are a dismantling of how situation that might be unwieldy and through the doors, as most would we’re supposed to consider things. A 68 Flatlands: Non-Hierarchical Space and its Uses JRS Issue 9 69 dismantling of what is expected in the people are talking, doing, and they elements of conversations that took was the relationships and consid- normative sense.), these Flatlands, know that their actions and speech, if place within the copy center, and erations that developed within the Generative Action is a power station. they choose, has the ability to leave expanded upon them in print. Two space in question, the ephemeral and Generative Action keeps the lights the room in some form—through thousand copies of this newspaper, invisible, that were the true building on. It harnesses the energy of those mutual agreement to talk about it which contained a poster insert for blocks of its construction. There’s no involved and transmogrifies it into with others, through a newspaper, a collaborative project Red76 devel- reason to be sad, or disheartened be- a new form, outside and other from through blog posts—the participants oped with the Great Lakes chapter cause it’s gone, because it never really where and what it once was. And in that activity know that not only of Iraq Veterans Against the War existed in the first place. Or, possibly like the energy company which keeps will the action within the space have (the first participants to take over more precisely, it never didn’t exist. our lights on, we really only vaguely a voice, their voice will be included. the VDC on its opening weekend), understand how it works. You turn a It will be included because it is their were distributed around the Colum- To continue, in brief, I’ll draw upon switch, and the room brightens. For space and their voice. Generative Ac- bus area for free; in coffee shops and another example of one of these most of us—despite our rudimen- tion allows the activities in questions record stores, free newspaper racks, Flat-Sites utilizing a contemporary tary understanding of the power grid to speak to the outside world while si- thrown onto the doorsteps of the action, in this case the anarchist that lights and energizes our towns multaneously speaking within a con- unknowing, but soon informed. On ice cream truck and radical action- and cities—this is the extent of our trolled space of their own making. a more day-to-day level, miming the mill that is the Center for Tactical knowledge and understanding. But And with that the participants enter historical VDC, we set up our photo- Magic’s Tactical Ice Cream Unit. we know it does work. And through into an agreement. The agreement copier and opened it to anyone who Nominally, Aaron Gach is The repeated involvement we grow a being that the action and dialogue wished to use it. Area groups, such as Center for Tactical Magic (CTM), sense of expectation, a belief. Genera- within the space that they are creat- the Great Lakes IVAW chapter, had but that isn’t quite right. As has been tive Action is a battery. It comes in ing is inherently a public dialogue. their logo printed onto each piece of made evident, platforms that operate the form of media; media as broadly No matter how many or how few paper leaving the shop. within these strategies, while continu- defined as possible. may be taking part at one time, the ously facilitated by certain core indi- activities at hand are always speaking The VDC was built to fail. Or, at viduals, are constantly in flux, the re- The way you talk about it. The way to the multitude. It was the Genera- least, it was from the standpoint that occurring individuals acting, mainly, you come across it. The way you tive Action which editors like Abner the VDC was supposed to be a per- as ballasts, a central node to balance hear it and see it. The Internet. Social Pope and Jay Fox helped create at manent ideal, a utopia. This feeling activities which take place over time, networks. Cell phones. The radio, Home, Washington that brought the of incompleteness, or failure, when space, and quotidian narrative. In through legal and illegal means. Post- isolated community into conversa- truly embodied, acts as a powerful the case of an activity as distinctly ers and broadsides. Newspapers and tion with the world outside of it. Let- agent for continuation of method, mobile as Tactical Ice Cream Unit zines. Books of course. Records and ters and periodicals emanating from interest, and activity, but not direct these actions become even more tapes. Graffiti. Carvings on a desk- Home brought Fox from Chicago narrative. This is what I mean by fleeting, even ghostly, spectral. top. Stickers. Buttons. Rumor. Myth. over The Cascades to begin with. In Ephemeral Distance: an encourage- Gach is the ballast of the CTM. The way other people are talking regard to the VDC Copy Center, our ment to internalize the ideas and The Tactical Ice Cream Unit takes about it. Even talking about it incor- project in Columbus, we made but- ideals of a space and project, but not shape through the reformatting of rectly. Disparagingly. Telling other tons which we gave away free around the thing in and of itself. Ephemeral an old ice cream truck, like the ones people it’s shit. This is Generative town. Oblique, and somewhat catchy, Distance allows participants the abil- we all followed, listened for, when Action within these spaces of fail- they simply stated, “VDC Me.” As ity to dismantle, deconstruct, and we were kids. Except, in this present ure. They allow the talk and move- well large full color postcards an- disfigure a Flat-Site specifically be- scenario, the truck is bulked out, ex- ment within a room to recognize its nounced the opening of the space. cause it encourages them to internal- ternally outfitted to exist somewhere space in the world outside the walls And in the middle of the project we ize its benefits and recognize that its within a magical Bizzaro World: that surround it. They render those produced a newspaper with contribu- temporal manifestations never really half Good Humor truck, half SWAT walls permeable and resonant. When tions from participants in regard to existed in the first place, and that it team vehicle. As CTM describes it, 70 Flatlands: Non-Hierarchical Space and its Uses JRS Issue 9 71 the project combines, “a number of you’d like: Pistachio Chocolate a mediated site, through spectacle as included on later reissues), as well as successful activist strategies (Food- Chip/Earth Liberation Front? Rocky much as technology, and fourth, it’s on New Thing at Newport, and the Not-Bombs, Copwatch, Indymedia, Road/Black Panther Party Ten-Point on wheels. It will not be there forever, seminal, large ensemble Coltrane re- infoshops, etc) into one mega-mo- Plan? You walk away satiated and and the ice cream you were given was lease Ascension. In the aftermath of bile, the TICU is the Voltron-like informed. Maybe you want more? devoured long ago. The question that Coltrane’s 1967 passing, Shepp typi- alter-ego of the cops’ mobile com- Are you intrigued? Begin asking remains is what was left behind. fied the post-Coltrane school, which mand center.” Though purposely far questions and see where it takes you, coalesced, to some degree, under the more flashy and high-tech, like the maybe inside the command center; A Call Towards name Fire Music, a nom de practice VDC, the Tactical Ice Cream Unit is the truck is filled with GPS, Mobile Authority in Reverse; that was derived from an album of both recognizable, and disorienting. WiFi, Surveillance technology, and Things Have Got the same name, released by Shepp on Taking aspects of two forms that are much more. While providing a means to Change the Impulse! label in the summer of at once familiar, but also the territory for direct and tangible disseminative 1965. A composer, playwright, pia- of someone else who is in charge, a action, these gadgets are less practi- Oddly, what lead me to drop out of nist, vocalist, and riotously melodic place out of bounds—the ice cream cal than they are discursive, they are college was the best class I ever took, saxophonist, Shepp used his collabo- man, as with the riot cop, make the agitations, they inhabit the truck as a possibly in all my formalized school- rations, his music, and especially the rules, we just follow them—the CTM means of provoking questions about ing, which in turn, was taught by the bandstand as a platform to discuss, with its Ice Cream Unit invites you in use, misuses, and the possibilities of best teacher I had ever been the stu- rail-out, condemn, and question the and puts you in charge. Again, initial a leveling of power. In time it is a dent of. This fact I have only realized, United States legacy of racism and points of entrance, or introduction, short walk from “What is the Black mind you, in retrospect, now more oppression. Equally as much, he cre- are evident. It is up to the partici- Block?” to “What if the Black Block than fifteen years down the road. In ated an atmosphere in which to cel- pants as to how they would like to had its own mobile command cen- no way did the professor persuade ebrate black life and culture. Albums proceed, how much authority they ter?” As the CTM states, “Providing me to make this decision. By no ap- and songs like Attica Blues, Rufus would like to have. food and food-for-thought, the Tacti- parent means did the content of the (Swung His Face At Last To The cal Ice Cream Unit merrily activates class, at least from how I perceived Wind, Then His Neck Snapped), Dr. At first, what do you see roll up? public space with wholesome infor- the content at the time, call me to this King, The Peaceful Warrior, Things A red and black vehicle that looks mation and good humor.” path of action (now, though, I am Have Got to Change, The Way vaguely militaristic, but it has goopy most assuredly certain that it did!). Ahead, and Malcolm, Malcolm Sem- cartoonish ice cream logos all over it. First, the Tactical Ice Cream Unit act But it all made perfect sense emo- per Malcolm resonated and provided The truck, blaring techno-drenched as a mask, a devise that we can all un- tionally. The class told me one thing space for the creation of a critical children’s tunes, rolls to a stop out- derstand, no matter how disjointed, clearly; get the fuck out. strain within black music of the 1960 side the park you’ve been playing fragmented, or illusory, this mask and beyond. basketball at with you friends that asks us to join in on the ruse, it is an Archie Shepp came to prominence afternoon. It is hot. You’re not sure invitation. Secondly, the Tactical Ice in the American, and soon after in- Revolutionary Concepts in Afro- what’s going on, but venturing to Cream Unit allows us to question ternational, jazz scene during a short American Music was a course de- see if this apparition has a cool treat who is in charge of the space which tenure with Cecil Taylor, and more veloped and taught by Archie Shepp seems like a good idea. Upon arrival is created, both the space being cri- publicly in a brief and apprentice- at the University of Massachusettes at the trucks window you’re greeted tiqued—that of the ice cream man, like collaboration with the composer —Amherst. The class began in 1971 by a vendor wearing sunglasses, a the riot cop, the politician—as well as and saxophonist John Coltrane. He and ran for thirty years. I took that black uniform, and a fake-mustache, the space in front of us. It continues played alongside Coltrane and his class for the whole year I spent in col- kind of like a seventies-era undercov- to ask who I am, and what is behind quartet of McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, lege and got an A. Which was a good er cop; hip on the outside, barely. You this mask; fake mustache, fake truck. and Jimmy Garrison on A Love Su- thing, (for what it was) as it bolstered are asked what flavor of ice cream, Fake desire? Fake message? Third preme (though his contribution was my grade point average against the as well as what flavor of literature, the Tactical Ice Cream Unit provides left out of the original release, to be F I received in Linguistics, and the 72 Flatlands: Non-Hierarchical Space and its Uses JRS Issue 9 73 other middling grades I received of U-Mass. Countless reasons, many systems of power, regardless of con- would put us at risk. We have created throughout that year of acid ex- of them developed by my own inter- tent. A planned environment whose an animal that values control and its perimentation and private reading. nal logic, rendered those classrooms determined goal is the dispersion of distribution, to avoid working within And let us be perfectly sure about vacant of all insight. Archie Shepp’s knowledge is inherently binary. It’s situations that simulate those values this, I am not about to tell you that class was different. It was, in total, exists between two points: teacher would put one at a disadvantage Archie’s class was the a priori root the exception that proved the rule. and student, knowledge and igno- when confronted with them in the of all that I’ve discussed within this rance. In this rare instance power was world outside the classroom. But to text. Not in the least. Archie’s class Power power and where it goes. given to me, it was not sublimated. I then take these platforms as our only was, far and away, top-down, taught How do you conduct yourself, meta- am sure that there were others in space for consideration, to take them from Above. Archie’s class told you phorically, when in contact with the the class that had a wholly different at face value, would be to fall short the truth, with a capital T. It was Ar- electrical force that power seems to experience from my own. But, that of our ideals. While they are needed, chie’s word against the ignorant, the emulate? Archie Shepp’s intimidat- fact would be missing the point. The much as a police force is needed in Powerful & Stupid. And, even to this ing presence at the front of the class, point is that educational constructs the here and now, to rely upon them day, I will admit I was awed—to the leading the way, was energizing for that rely on one power structure will, solely eradicates the will to question, point where I have a wayward fear, me. It charged, rather than shocked, by design, kill off some of those in shatters our desires for the unknown. as I write, that lightning bolt’s might or incapacitated, me. It gave me pur- attendance. It’s a crapshoot. For the It is with the unknown, the unknow- rain down from above for the blas- pose and allowed me to consider the social dynamics of any relationship ing, the unknowable, it is with all of phemous impertinence of calling him material at hand in a myriad of differ- that relies on the hierarchical distri- its anarchic messy intangibles, that by his first name. As far as the learn- ent ways. The material and teaching bution of power to work, there are we begin to see, through the hazy dis- ing environment was concerned, flat method acted as a conduit, allowing those who need to understand (win) tance the shores of Mount Analog. was not the terrain. The altitude was me to begin seeing other avenues of and those who need to be confused We need our messy utopian consid- high, and the climbing, vigorous. In affection in news ways, if not always (fail). And this, I’ll argue, is not an erations. We need our mistakes. We this regard, he is (past, present, and harmonious. The information that inherently bad thing. This distribu- need them because, in truth, they are future) Mr. Shepp. was being relayed was easily decon- tion of power and its affects is not in- not mistakes at all, only knowledge structed and made plain in relation herently destructive if, and only if, we masquerading as failure. They are And yet, with all that I’ve stated up to racial, economic, social, political, attend to it with as much question- what is to come. In the meantime we to this point, it’s imperative for me and labor concerns, even if those ing, playfulness, and skepticism as we work within the frame. We consider to confess that I felt liberated. At the avenues of concern weren’t always might in the non-hierarchical Flat- how we live, work, and act within the time I had internalized my decision explicitly raised from point to point lands which I’ve drawn out today. here and now. But in tandem, like to leave school (in all honesty, I was during class time. The information Often that is not the case. We tend to the founders of Home, we build our asked to leave soon after I had made disseminated, and means in which it view these platforms, not for what we boat together, using the wood from my decision…), I just knew it was was contextualized, within (forgive imagine they could be, but for what the world we know, and collectively the correct thing to do. I was lucky me, it’s just easier to write that way) we perceive they are. It is, in turn, an we set off into the foggy distance, enough to have my family’s money Archie’s Revolutionary Concepts in important distinction, one that shack- shouting behind us, “See you in the paying for it. And what a waste! I Afro-American Music course was a les us to the absolute, a win or lose future!” as we sail towards the Holy would have just been there because; platform, in and of itself, for me. It proposition. We pit one against the Mountain, calmed by the confusion I had to, it was the right thing to do, created new ground to stand on. other and watch the dominoes fall. that will envelop us as we get fur- I felt obligated. I would not have Like our relationship with money, ther and further away from shore. been there because I was compelled Here, again, we arrive at the reoc- we have developed systems that rely Soon the ocean will be like a sheet of to be there, because I was inspired. I curring issue: all education is po- on power and its affects to survive. shimmering glass: flat, transparent, would not have, apart from Archie litical. All education is political, Without them we’d short circuit. To radiant. Shepp’s class, been there to absorb in that educational platforms and disregard these spaces and systems a thing inside any of the classrooms methodologies create and distribute because we disagree with their affects 74 JRS Issue 9 JRS Issue 9 75

• YouTube as only one example out VII locus of human imaginal and spiri- of many—aims at discussing how tual life to a barren non-place. Until Y ouTube School we create new ideas, how knowledge Introduction to recently in mainstream Western soci- manifests through anarchic asso- ety, and in many corners of the world for Social Politics ciations of seemingly disparate data. “MYSTERY continuing (in-spite of the dominat- Through an association of content ing wisdom of our Enlightened and (YTSSP) new ideas form, if these associations ECOLOGY” Rational modern world), most of hu- are further and further deemed as manity possessed an Animistic spiri- The YouTube School for Social explicitly proprietary we are quite lit- (2009) tuality. They believed that the various Politics (YTSSP) commissions art- erally killing our ability to create for manifestations of earth, wind, water ists, economists, writers, politicians, the sake of a few dollars for a mere Gabriel Saloman and fire had spirits who inhabited historians, whoever, to compose clips few people. The YTSSP then exists and spoke for them. Beyond these which they’ve found on YouTube as as a space for two-folded consider- In the first decade of our new mil- consciousness’ were creatures who the building blocks towards the cre- ation, education in both content and lennium the forests are nearly gone. walked between worlds of spirit and ation of what we call an essay. As a context. It asks, “How may I consider “The Woods”, the wild unexploited matter. Further still, even within the narrative conceit the illusion to writ- the value of the ideas presented to expanse of trees, flora and fauna, are context of a singular creator, the ing is important. By composing these me?” as well as, “how may I consider being decimated, disappearing with a world of nature represented the su- clips into a conversation with one the validity and authorship or their fearful rapidity. Yet we, as a civiliza- preme proof of artistic majesty. another, glued together with the as- creation?” tion, show no remorse or concern in sistance of a video forward spoken by spite of the fact that we actually know Now, thanks to the constantly ex- the author (these videos being very better. The potential for continued panding course of human history, this similar to response videos you might life on earth depends on the ecosys- relationship has begun to disappear. find on YouTube), the essay’s aim at tems that flourish in these interlock- The forces of Colonization have tak- creating a visual description of how ing spaces of woodlands, forests and en the influences first of Christianity we create texts. jungles. Without trees we’re fucked. and later Cartesian reason, to the far In the context of this devastation we corners of the earth, attacking the Ideas don’t come out of thin air, no face a multiplicity of loss. Not only practice of earth based spirituality on matter how much some might like to are we seeing the evaporation of a the one hand, and asserting a human pretend that they do. We take from physical habitat, but we are experi- dominion over nature on the other. the world around us, we manipulate encing a type of loss which speaks di- Technology has allowed humans to the ideas that interest us and provoke rectly to the realm of human psyche penetrate ever deeper into the un- us, we piece this information togeth- and human culture. For much of known corners of wilderness, oceans er, and by our own personality, by our humanity, the forest is a Temple of and space. Our voracious consump- own point of view, these discrete bits Mystery where-in borders between tion of natural resources has razed of information, by association, create our internal and external realities the Earth and driven our machinery a new whole. This process continues overlap, and from which much of further and further, reducing even the over and over again, continuously our ancestral inheritance of myth most remote landscape into its com- morphing, exponentially. In a con- and communion with all manner of ponent parts. Most in the West have temporary sense this is an extremely whispered voices, hidden creatures no intimate relationship with our or- important idea to consider in regard and living knowledge is derived. The ganic world any longer, and we are to a networked society. While seem- act of deforestation, in fact all acts of acting to deprive the rest of the globe ingly simple, maybe even juvenile, environmental devastation, produce of the capacity for theirs. What we the process of the YTSSP—using the disastrous effects of reducing the may be losing is not just our means 76 Introduction to “MYSTERY ECOLOGY” (2009) JRS Issue 9 77 of sustaining civilization, but a true and Scientifically oriented world- refusing to acclimate to changes in that we have deeper investment than source of wonder, of deep imagina- view there is a overwhelming desire society, but the colonization of the even our physical well being and that tion, of communion with our internal for evidence of the unknown. Americas provided a chance to re- our call to change is made on a wide- spirit, and quite possibly the liminal turn to a “state of nature”. As cit- ly internal plane. With out wilderness consciousness’ which make up the What it also tells us is that we haven’t ies and nations developed on these we lose the storehouse of imagina- bulk of our human folklore. The con- departed from our Pagan roots as continents, the frontier pushed fur- tion, the true realm of the impossible, cern for this situation I would name much as we pretend to. In much of ther inward and west ward, where and the only place where we can have Mystery Ecology. the Western world, especially among individuals and strange colonies intercourse with the unknown. The rural peoples and those from less de- sought a world both before and after destruction of wild places is the des- In finding a way to discuss this con- veloped communities there is an un- civilization. Now it is nearly impos- ecration of our most ancient temples, cern, to make my case, and to dis- derlying set of practices, stories, ritu- sible to escape the penetrating reach our first Cathedrals, our only self- cover it’s language, it was to my great als and relationships with things and of technology and development. Yet renewing house of worship. The de- surprise that YouTube provided not places whose origin lies in our pre- a resistance to this alienation and a fense of nature must be out of love, only a wide diversity of representa- Christian ancestry. What is critical creative will to develop new codes empathy and most likely for it to suc- tions of this Temple of Mystery and about acknowledging this is two-fold: and forms of relationship with Na- ceed, a renewed sense of awe. it’s destruction, but it’s own dialectic firstly that it explains idiosyncrasies ture have developed among various exploration of these concerns. You- of our cultures that are rooted in a countercultures. Many seek to re- Tube serves as a fantastic archive of historical and cultural set of values, claim a lost inheritance from their the peripheral and at times highly and secondly that this is a common- Pagan ancestry, while others have the specialized concerns of culture, but it ality with many indigenous cultures nerve to invent a culture out of whole also generates that culture from with- not only in the 3rd world, but in the cloth, but almost all find surprising in. Video responses, loose associa- colonized territory of the First and ways to merge their favored elements tions, “channels”, and motivation to Second. It is a pan-human phenom- of civilization with a imagined primi- create more content all have created a ena to worship the Earth as sacred, tive state of humility before Nature. multivalenced discourse around even and thus to defend it with a religious The mundane qualities of style, mu- the most absurd ephemera. One con- language and devotion. Environmen- sic and manufactured objects merge cern of Mystery Ecology is especially tal destruction has long been a tactic with the sacred and become sacred well suited to the tools of technology of warfare, but to those who worship themselves. and the platform of YouTube, that the Earth as a living spirit it is simply being Crypto-zoology, or the study War. Though most language used by The importance of Mystery Ecology of mythical, imagined or unidentified the Environmentalist movement is is that it leads us back to a state of creatures. Within this frame the pro- devoted to Science and appealing to interconnectedness with Nature. To duction of footage of improbable if human self-interest, there has always look at nature still as a mechanis- historically acknowledged creatures been a discourse around magic, spirit tic force, albeit one we depend on, has flourished, as has a semi-serious and sacredness on the margin. Mys- makes us cogs in the machine. It im- engagement in the validity of these tery Ecology acknowledges this as a plies that what is needed to fix this materials. What appeals to me is not primary concern. broken vehicle is a better engine or the potential that these images are that we could somehow replace one real, but that they convey a genuine The final portion of this essay is a machine with another. It relies on the tension between belief, experience brief survey of ways in which post- economics of self-interest to motivate and empiricism which is at the heart Civilized people in the west return to us to change the disastrous course of this broader subject. That even in a state of Wildness. The wilderness we’re on. Mystery Ecology argues the face of a secular, Christianized, has often been the last refuge of those that we are not separate from nature, 78 JRS Issue 9 JRS Issue 9 79

VIII marches marshal demands you fol- is not beginning, middle & end. It The preceding texts are written low the approved route; similar is walking in a group down streets transcriptions of introductions to Introduction to to the police with cuffs giving you you normally drive. Playing with YouTube School for Social Politics twenty seconds to move; similar to emotions. A vibrant form of living. essays. Visit www.red76.com/ytssp “Mediation, Self- the organizer spinning your slogans, Happening. to view these essays online as well chants, actions, into press releases for as others from Stephen Duncombe, Marginalization their own organization. Protest film/ That a media hasn’t kept up with Mike Wolf, Dan S. Wang, Courtney video manipulates actual experience ways people perceive existences- in- Dailey, Emily Piper Foreman, and and Post Politics of a protest to its own ends. While we dividual, fractured, alienated- is it others. may be in sympathy with its goals, any wonder that this media is largely in Protest Media” their desires for theater should be self marginalized? Most people today given little respect. Like publicists, confront power by not confronting it. (2009) they are a necessary evil. We tactically avoid protest retreating to the private sphere. We leave the Robby Herbst To protest is to live & express. Pro- public sphere to those we believe to test is spontaneous creativity. To be “crazy enough” to be there. Protest has the qualities of theater capture these experiences, framing with its rituals & narratives. However them, why should we care? The worst Why would anyone wish to be among it is media itself that creates narra- thing protest medias do is promote the crazies in the street? Our life- tive & story. The experience of pro- the idea that protest is theater. Both styles seem to afford us the options test is something other than theater. mainstream media & activist media of avoiding protest. Dropping out, Literature, film, stage, dance all have propagate this stereotype. Main- we believe we can Beat the mad- had post-modern moments. “Story” stream media rationalize state power men & the state. We believe we can is thrown into doubt. Protest-film/ & marginalizes opposition. Activists supercede narritivization by all the video hasn’t had its post-modern promote their causes. Both forms of crazies, Given the choice it’s easier moment. Contemporary activist me- mediation create the myth that pro- to have private expression than give dia may contain elements referenc- test is a fight between two irrational it to the observers. This is the sad ing postmodernism (irony, bricolage, forces. And why would outsiders state that protest media has created. skewed time sequences), narrative enter a fight unless they were a so- A sad circle of logic leading to an Ab- remains central to protest media. ciopath? Protest is theater only to dication of the public sphere. Private Medias done in relationship to pro- observers. Protest doesn’t need more space is powerful but lacks collective test serve “political” functions. As watchers. It needs participants. experience such they are tools of argument. They are forms of propaganda. Can protest medias leave narrative? If the theater of protest is to end pro- Propaganda’s narrative is political. Can it drop the need for argument, test film/video makers must stop por- Narrative, as propaganda, is subjec- rule of law, ethics, talking heads, traying it as such. Artists should help tive fictionalization of experience. characters? Can protest-video be us see it otherwise. While there is truth, in protest, its something other? Can it go beyond documentation trades in fiction. its drive to make sense of experience? Can it make nonsense? Nonsense is Similar to how a rally’s speaker de- what protest is. Power is illogical, mands attention whether you care challenging it is to. Protests begins to give it or not; similar to how the where it ends. Experiences of protest 80 JRS Issue 9 JRS Issue 9 81

IX YouTube, and the “response video” creation of a public. If we can see a GS: I think “to exist”… but, I think and the viewers responses, dialog “social space” and a “public” maybe one difference between how you view A Conversation that happens online—and found a being synonymous. Maybe they’re the project and how I view the proj- way to use it as a catalyst for conver- not. Maybe “social space” is the ac- ect—this is only an impression I’ve between sations in the real world. I wonder if tivation of a “public”. received from conversations we’ve my characterization of it reflects your had—is that I view social networks Sam Gould, experience of it? GS: I think there is a qualitative dif- such as YouTube, and Myspace, ference, even if there’s not a hierar- Facebook, Craigslist, I view these as Gabriel Saloman SG: I guess there are two answers. chal difference—one is better, one is alienating even though they create There could be my answer as an ar- worse. Aja (Rose Bond) was talking sociality, even though they create and Robby Herbst chitect of the project, and then my about that this morning when she spaces for people to interact and cre- answer as just a participant and facil- was saying that under a lot of circum- ate communities, I still feel like they concerning the itator on the ground. But then there’s stances, maybe all, art is social but have a fracturing nature, because Robby’s answer as an essayist, which there is a qualatative difference be- I still feel that they actually disad- YouTube School I think could be different answers. I’d tween going to an opening where the vantage people in their attempts to like Robby to go first, in that regard. social is really much more a dynamic communicate in interpersonal ways, for Social Politics of party with art as a backdrop, and a one-on-one, in the flesh, in real life. GS: Ok, Robby, the buck is passed… situation where the artwork actually I actually feel the project is a critique Sunday includes an intention to discuss, an in that way. RH: I think all Art creates a “social intention articulate ideas and share GS: Last night we presented the first space”, and last night the discursive among the social gathering that’s SG: Yeah, I don’t view it that way. It’s screening in Vancouver of the You- nature of the project certainly lived there. not that I necessarily disagree with Tube School for Social Politics and up that expectation. You know, you you, it’s that I would apply the same —part of this is the nature of how have the community of YouTube it- SG: I guess maybe what I’m trying to critique to a gathering like last night. Robby presented it, but part of it I self, which is kind of a degraded com- say is I really don’t want to divorce It depends on your personality. It’s think is the nature of the project—I munity, but when it’s brought to the the idea of invisible publics that ex- the non-space that we can’t equate, found that it really wasn’t the view- flesh in the room there, there was cer- ist through these ideas of creating an that kind of metaphysical space, that ing of videos that seemed that impor- tainly a community of discourse sur- essay, whether its through the com- we’re actually trying to fill, and that’s tant in the course of the event, if not rounding the work there. It’s pretty position of YouTube clips or through where we’re populated. People can the project as a whole, but it was the straight forward. writing, and that the compartmen- feel alienated anywhere, and it de- conversation afterwards. And it was talization of that in the form of this pends on your personality type, and a really engaged and interesting con- SG: For me it exists on a couple of gathering or on a website or in a book it’s the theoretical space that we’re versation that really continued all the different planes. I agree with Robby, or in a magazine is somehow greater trying to populate through projects way into this morning’s breakfast, it creates a community through the or lesser, and that those invisible such as this. So I think that’s where among ourselves and people who apparatus of these clips acting as a publics, and then the temporal mani- I can’t equate one having a hierarchy were at the screening. vehicle to be able to create a public festation of those publics are equally over the other, one being alienating around an issue—they act as tools— important to me, and they both act and one not being alienating, because SG: Of course… but as well I’m reticent towards say- within the activation of this idea of people’s personalities are different, ing that doing the same thing online, the creation of a public or a social so the creation of a myriad of spaces, GS: So, what I like about the project and maybe having an internal dialog sphere, and that lots of people don’t or nebulous space, is what I’m more is that we’re taking something I think or a one to one conversation with need to be together for that social inclined to look for. They all have of being a hermetic space of engage- someone who also may be viewing sphere to exist. their qualities and each of them has ment with other people—which is it on a computer is not as much a a benefit and a deterrent. 82 A Conversation on the YTSSP JRS Issue 9 83

GS: I tend to feel that there’s a sig- a way to bridge both worlds, by being talking about Hi-art or academic ar- is the ability to have really compre- nificant difference between social both simultaneously. Does that make chives, it’s pop because you’re talking hensive lectures, and the ability to alienation and mediated alienation. sense? about 12 second cuts that are all dis- have face-time with your students, What I mean by that is that clearly, jointed. It engenders this kind of surf- and to communicate in relatively un- obviously, before the internet, before SG: Yeah. Yeah, it does makes sense ing that is a of a form of Pop Culture. mediated space. I guess my relation- computers, people felt alienated from for me. I wonder then if “the creation So being asked to be some sort of a ship to the whole proposition of the society—I think things such as the of social space” is the proper termi- librarian or archivist of YouTube YouTube School was somewhat fil- history of Poetry are written out of nology. For me, I think its a kind of and to create an essay from that, the tered through that experience of frus- that… Shelly felt alienated… a misnomer. At least for my own in- instantaneous impulse for me was to trating… having experience teaching clinations. For me, then, I’m creating create some sort of cultural theory through online universities and col- SG: People also feel alienated from a kind of educational space, a space where I explain some broad concept leges to begin with. This is a differ- Poetry! There’s the converse. for the creation of systems, creation that’s just highly subjective and per- ent model than that, in that it’s much of knowledge, and this is a collective sonalized through the collaging of more loosey-goosey, it’s not peda- GS: It’s true, and I recognize that activity, so it’s the creation of a non- disjointed videos and to construct a gogical, it doesn’t even attempt to there’s an exclusivity to the Artworld hierarchal education space. vast narrative. Then I reflected upon have curricula, really, except a bunch and the art-space, the kind of space “Gosh-dammit, I really hate all that of lectures. At the same time, written that we set up… GS: There’s certainly more to the stuff”. So it really allowed me to into that is this logic that “Oh since projects, particularly the YouTube think about why it is that I hate that this is a shared space we can have SG: I don’t know if I’m going to cod- School for Social Politics, than just stuff, and then what is it that I can this”, but in a certain sense, that’s ify it as that, per se. I’m just saying the social aspect of it. I was really use this medium for. Which is that what we’re told by Internet utopia- there’s going to be somebody alienat- gratified, actually, to hear what Rob- this can be another place where I nists and interests that are behind the ed by anything. The people liberated by said during the screening, which can respond to why it is that I hate Internet, but at the same time it is a by poetry and the people alienated by was that in the act of making the es- this kind of cultural theory, and why degraded, and degrading world in a poetry. say he was able to work through ideas it is that I really hate the alienating certain sense to the classical idea of and concerns he had that he didn’t space that is YouTube, why it is that what education and pedagogy is sup- GS: But are all alienations the same? know how to, or have the space to, I don’t really like this proposition of posed to be. I think that the kind of alienation prior to the “assignment”. I had a putting things together, and to try to that I personally experience, but I similar experience creating my essay. make sense of experience through it GS: That touches on a question also feel like I witness, that is due to In a way, that is a noble enough goal in a way that I feel is so completely, which is really interesting to me, people’s mediated relations through unto itself, that it provides authors in a certain sense, besides the point. which is “What is our expectation of internet technology and a kind of a way to work through ideas. It’s a It allowed me to think through what pedagogy?” internet community spaces, is a dif- great tool for that. (to Robby) Can it is I find frustrating about pop- ferent kind of alienation. It suffers you speak to that? Academicism. And this is… comes RH: Excellent. Yes. for being the same word, but I think from… as I said last night, I teach that applies, and I think it’s one that RH: Yeah, for me I found myself at an Online College. I have classes GS: What do we feel we’re entitled needs to be critically addressed be- writing cultural theory with YouTube that are based onsite, but the major- to when we’re attending a school? cause it has a direct effect on our so- and all I could reflect upon was how ity of the students I deal with, in this Whether it’s a theoretical, ephemeral cial politic. For me that’s the actual I hate a particular type of cultural writing program that I do, are on- school like the YouTube School, or value of this project, is that it’s try- theory that I was really drawn to, and line, and it’s such a degraded form of if it’s an online course we’ve applied ing to find a way to make mediated I was drawn to doing that because education because all the ideas… the to, or if it’s a University of California communal spaces less alienating, or YouTube presents itself as this vast form of a university is there—with a campus. provide an outlet for a more engaged pop-cultural library—and specifi- shared space; a common area to form relationship to our media, by finding cally pop-cultural even when you’re critique—but what you’re missing SG: Because, for me it’s non-linearity. 84 A Conversation on the YTSSP JRS Issue 9 85

That’s what I expect. I’m sure it’s dif- mostly read like this: “He wrote an a student is going to be, and how that is a full coarse! (All laugh) you ferent for everyone. But it’s not hav- excellent essay. He was a frequent their going to learn, and it’s a sin- know? And that’s even more than a ing “point A” and “point B”. It’s participant in classroom discussion. gular model of education. There are full coarse. Something like the You- that space in the middle—and maybe His ideas were pointed. He clearly certain students that can conform to Tube School just exists as the model this is where we get into the idea of understood the material. He failed to that model, and in that model if you of the Flaneur, possibly, and the the social, or I would say more the turn in one last essay and automati- achieve a heirarchial path of knowl- model of just the education, pop-cul- idea of the anarchic—where-in what cally failed because it was a require- edge, where you start at the bottom, ture writ large, looking at billboards we don’t expect to come about. It’s ment.” (Sam and Robby laugh) So and you climb up, and at the top you that have their own hermetic kind of the ideas that are not being brought that was my educational history for jump through these hoops, there’s logic and understanding to them, and by one person or the other, but the a year and a half at UC Santa Cruz. I a measurable “success”. These on- then its hermeticism is sealed com- confluence of ideas, or possibly the was there, I was present, I was learn- line universities they take that same pletely within that space, and then antagonism of ideas that creates ing, I was engaged, I was undisci- hierarchel model of the student and you move on. That creates excellent pedagogical space. It’s what we don’t plined and I didn’t fit the… I didn’t what they’re going to do, but they people who move like motorcyclists expect to bring to the table. fit. take away any of the investment in a through Pop-Culture or through the faculty who can work with students landscape, but doesn’t necessarily GS: So it’s the space of ambiguity or SG: The mold. and respond to them in any kind of build anything besides people who unknown, where we can feel safe ac- either very structured manner or an are good grazers. I think that was a knowledging we don’t know. GS: I didn’t fit that mold and there unstructured manner. It’s basically… fear of mine for that project. was no space for me continuing my click. You did this. click. You did this. SG: Yeah. education under those circumstances. click. You did this… and there’s no SG: Well, I think for me that kind of In that context. In the context of the way to actually give students any in- grazing, as you say, is an expectation. GS: I can certainly support that. established school. And so I instead depth feedback or to give students I wouldn’t expect anyone to stop And that’s your personal view. But entered into the world of learning by any declensions from the path of aca- there. Maybe more appropriately it it doesn’t acknowledge the degree to living in a van and traveling around demicism. It’s merely just… you’ve should just be called a class, rather which, societally, we’ve been led to the country. And life has taken me done the work, now you move on. than a school, and by that expecta- believe that we are going to receive from there. You’ve done the work, now you move tion it is A thing, rather than THE something tangible for our efforts… on. The YouTube School answers, in thing. There is an expectation that SG: Similarly, for me, though I think some sense to… we have this technol- you are absorbing an aspect of a SG: No, I’m talking about my ideal I would have had a not as great ogy—let’s do something with it. And means of engagement, a form of ped- pedagogical space… evaluation as you did. (All laugh) “I it’s not like an online college by any agogy to look at a certain idea, but don’t know who this guy is. He never sense, but at the same time, it’s got then you move on to something else, GS: Fair enough. showed up!” this absolute inability to have any and that through the confluence of feedback or response, or a measur- those classes, that’s where the school SG: I’m talking about not what ex- GS: So for you (to Robby), what do ing of the context—who’s looking at is created. For me, I would hope it’s ists, but the space I didn’t get to have you see… let me ask it this way: what this? Why are they looking at this? through projects like this, it’s those as much, and therefore I felt it was a is meaningfully similar or meaning- Where are they going with this? You kind of multiple forms of engage- detriment to my own education, and fully different between YTSSP, your may stumble upon it in that sense ment embodied in one person that my own way that I best learn. online college that you’re a teacher of progressive education, or, sorry, creates that kind of individualized at, and a UC? of radical pedagogy, where it is this university, the university of the self. GS: I can relate to this. I went to UC model, where you’re learning from Santa Cruz, and we, at the times, still, RH: Well, the UC’s are a degraded doing, and you’re learning through GS: You know, I feel like what you didn’t have grades, we had written form of education as well. Where experience. But really, when you’re said touches on my biggest criticism, evaluations. My written evaluations that’s a standard expectation of what experiencing through life in a van… and concern, about the whole field 86 A Conversation on the YTSSP JRS Issue 9 87 of social practices, socially engaged these utopic… these utopias… in considering the world? the projects are about, but there is a work, social sculpture, which is that, light of lets just say this whole 70’s utopian quality to it. Being a fan of on the one hand, without a way of era aftermath of 60’s burnout, and RH: I think that with Red76 projects Utopias, it’s easy for me to think of having measurable results then some that you’re walking along with a lot in particular, I think your projects different ones specifically applying, very big phrases or ideas can be put of quasi-utopic drugged out zombie are based on this idea of discourse, and I think that one that Red76 most out there, like “we’re creating com- freaks who crashed?” My response and that conversation can always be reminds me of is René Daumal’s munity”, or “we’re creating a dia- was that I understand that critique, a critical one, and that conversation “Mount Analog”. Have you ever log”, “we’re expanding… creating… and I’d be equally as suspect of that, can always be alegiac. I agree with read this? da-dee-da”—but how do you know? if I felt that what I was trying to cre- Gabe that that is a problem within Where are the measurable results? ate was a utopia. Whereas the work the field. RH & SG: No… But then if you begin focusing on that I feel like I’m doing, and I would trying to find measurable results you say that we’re all doing, is not try- SG: Yeah, I do too. I agree with him GS: René Daumal was a friend of start taking away the magic, the mys- ing to create utopias but trying to too. Certainly I’m not trying to put Alexander de Salzmann, who was a tery, to my way of speaking about it, critique Utopia (as it’s understood this idea about how the work works student of G.I. Gurdjeff, and he was the beauty of that work. Part of the in the normative sense). And to dis- blanketedly over everybody, because a poet, surrealist. He wrote a book beauty of that work is that you’re cuss what it could be, what its faults it’s not the case, but I do see certain called “Mount Analog”—which was trusting that it radiates out. Like a could be, what its positive aspects people who I feel like are trying to do turned into the movie by Jardowsky ripple in a pond… that you’re actu- could be and to create these moments that, and I would say the Journal of called “Holy Mountain”. His book ally creating something that expands of consideration, and there just hap- Aesthetics and Protest does some- is the story of an island which this the realm of your control or knowl- pens to be this desire to consider bet- thing like that too in a way at least in anthropologist talks about, who says edge, and that’s the good of it. That’s ter worlds, and it’s not about creat- terms of its radiative effect, possibly that every culture has this mountain, the karma of it. But, I still feel like it’s ing that world, it’s about discussing not in the center of what you guys are which is the holy mountain, and we a complication that hasn’t rigorously what those worlds could be. Looking trying to do, but it creates that. At of course living in a scientific world been acknowledged within social at all of the problems. Looking at all least it creates that for me. know that his mountain doesn’t exist, practices. the good points. In that sense, even right, because if it existed we’d have the absence of something that could GS: There’s two things I want to re- found it by now. But… SG: I have a way of engaging that, be perceived as really, really posi- spond to. One is question that I want that… I don’t know.. it works for tive—like when we leave Columbus, to just put out there so that anyone SG: Much like Bigfoot… not so true! me… that it’s that space of problems, and A/AA is dismantled, and people can pick it up, which is that I would that space of questioning, wherein the can feel this audible sucking sound— still like to talk more about that criti- GS: Not so true! What he says is that work exists. I’m equally as off-put by that is equally as beneficial because cal concern which I expressed about the mountain is there, but the only work that doesn’t have that space for it serves as a space for questioning. measurable results versus quantify- way that we can approach it is by questioning. Or doesn’t couch itself It was same for the Franklin VDC ing something that should be ephem- believing in the invisible. In a sense within a space for questioning. The copy center, in that the absence of eral, or should be immeasurable, but you can only approach it the same “it’s all good” school of work, I’m re- that space again provides a space for how we address that as practitioners way you find Bigfoot which is by not ally really suspect of. But, if you see it questioning. “Why do I feel bad that so that there is an authenticity or a looking for it, and discovering it by as this space for questioning, I think this isn’t here anymore?” “What has dignity to what we’re doing, that it accident. He takes a group of people, it opens up a lot of space of possiblity. it taken away?” Things like that. (To isn’t bullshit. But, I want to step back I think including a poet, and a natu- It allows you to see it as there are the Robby) Do you encounter that? Do one moment and respond to some- ralist, a bunch of people with differ- good and bad points. In this sense… you understand that kind of line of thing you were saying about Utopias. ent backgrounds and on a ship they I was giving a lecture after we were in argument? That the work exists as a I do thing there is something, a uto- accidently find the holy mountain in Columbus, and somebody asked the space for critique, not as a space for pian aspect to our collective projects. the middle of the ocean. Then they question “How do you feel creating creating the world, but a space for This may not be the totality of what enter into this journey up the holy 88 A Conversation on the YTSSP JRS Issue 9 89 mountain which is an allegorical sto- X as instead he is actually experiencing ry about internal wisdom and other something much richer by, “LIVIN’ things. But, the thing is, René Daum- Punk Politics? THE CINNAMON LIFE!” al died before he finished the book. So, you get about three chapters in Or lack thereof? The previous scene could take place at and they’ve reached the shore of the any frat house throughout Columbus, holy mountain and they’re about to A Punk House Ohio especially when the Ohio State begin ascending and then it ends and football team wins or loses a game. there’s a few notes in the back. is only a Bouts of drunken antics are bound to develop due to frustration, anger, or SG: That’s so perfect. Pedagogical just plain Midwest boredom. GS: That to me is Red76’s utopian Beginning But what is the meaning of such an methodology in a nutshell. action when it occurs in a different Cassie Troyan context, such as a punk house? Can it SG: (Laughing) Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I suddenly become a statement against totally agree. We are the Holy Moun- A community is a group of people who regulated authority, an extended fin- tain. (Pause) We’re not the Holy all have the same Venereal Disease. ger towards the standards of propriety Mountain, we’re the boat. —Dorothy Gambrell, Cat and Girl and downright respectable behavior?

GS: (Laughing) We’re the boat! It’s a Saturday night in Columbus, The punk house was created with Ohio and a bonfire is blazing in the only the best of intentions. In particu- (All laugh) backyard, catching some of the house lar, the Monster House in Columbus, chairs encircling it on fire. Firecrack- Ohio follows a specific set of punk RH: I could see that… really. ers are shot into the night from on top house principles in its personal mani- of the garage and thump repeatedly festo, which is given to each new against my bedroom window. Even- band before they play at the house. tually the fire quietly dissipates, and beer bottles cover the garage roof, In this instance, and such is the case until a roar erupts in the kitchen. in many, the punk house is meant to foster growth within a community, as David is rolling on the filthy kitchen it creates a niche for an alternative floor with the rest of my roommates to bars and other mainstream music gathered around him, sprinkling his venues. Through the communication writhing body with cinnamon while of these bands that travel through chanting, “YOU GOT THE CIN- the country, acquaintances form NAMON LIFE!” From this point, with bands that once played at your wrestling proceeds until a box of house and suddenly one has alliances Cinnamon Life is brought out and nationwide. ritualistically stabbed until the entire contents cover the floor. Thrashing “BEFORE PLAYING THE MON- around continues as Ryan is told STER HOUSE, READ THIS… not to mourn the loss of his cereal, ABOUT US: 90 Punk Politics? Or lack thereof?… JRS Issue 9 91

The Monster House hosts shows in inebriated to the point of 1. insult- Within this space is where several of can often substitute itself as a resolu- our home to give national, interna- ing others or 2. not being able to the housemates supply their own in- tion. The more ephemeral we make tional, and local independent acts an control yourself, mentally or physi- come with small personal businesses. our actions, or at least the more tran- autonomous, politically aware place cally. THANKS ♥ MONSTERS” Jimi Payne makes buttons, which sient they appear to be from any sort to play in Columbus, OH. We strive are sold at museums and galleries of peripheral vantage point, so too to be a welcoming environment for The Monster House, like many other around the city, such as the Wexner will their possible relevancy remain anyone who wishes to come. Help Punk Houses, is created and utilized Center Store. Pat Crann runs Shout on the outskirts of pragmatic purpose. us keep our house completely free of beyond just the intention of hav- Out Loud Prints, a screen-printing racism, sexism, homophobia, clas- ing an alternative music venue. The company out of the garage, and In This is the inherent problem of punk sism, and mindless disrespect. space itself functions as an environ- The Pocket Tapes is run by Austin politics. A politics of convenience, ment that promotes acts of pedagogi- Eilbeck; all of these projects make and moral convenience, where any ac- We believe shows in alternative spac- cal living, commonly dubbed as DIY use of hand-made systems of pro- tion that can be construed as against es can lead to a more direct, personal culture. In the Monster House there duction, and often for exceptionally capitalism or power is justified, yet it and positive connection with music are approximately 11 to 13 residents large orders, the whole house can get is a politics that does not acknowledge and with the other folks in atten- at any given time, some in shared liv- involved to meet the demand. the questionable flexibility that makes dance. Our house is not a launch pad ing spaces, some for the three years it easy to down several PBR tall-boys to fame and fortune—it is part of a of the house’s existence, others only So not only are the Monsties invested or shoplift at Kroger’s. growing community intentionally a few months. in pedagogical frameworks, but in challenging the popular definition root Capitalism as well. These entre- We are all bound to hypocrisy, but of success. We know that the art and The multiple social spaces include preneurial endeavors, although still what makes this dangerous is the music we make can be shared on our a practice room in the basement inevitably rely on and remain within vagueness of its foundation. When own terms. Music is the reason for where the numerous combinations the context of a Capitalist system one only has hazy notions against the gathering—it is not a house party, of band mates who live in the house and society, they utilize initiating mainstream society or corporations, it is a show. THE DOUGH: Dona- practice, along with a commons that community and communication as a based on a personal is political ide- tions of $5 are strongly encouraged at contains the house library. The li- means of education through shared ology that can easily become the ex- each show to support touring bands. brary is a shared collection of music, experienced. tent of one’s political engagement; a Please make this apparent when ad- books, and zines covering everything substitute for more difficult political vertising the show. The money is to from Anarchism to Noam Chomsky Upon entering the house there is a actions. support them, not the house. Locals and hardcore 7”s to vegetarian large banner that creeps along the play as support to the touring bands cookbooks. top of the wall alerting everyone that One resident of the Monster House, and will not normally be paid. Usu- we do not tolerate acts of “racism, Jimi Payne, believes there is noth- ally, locals get some food, have fun, People in the house dumpster dive sexism, homophobia, classism, and ing inherently political about living play to an audience of music enthusi- and share the excess food with the mindless disrespect.” The upholding cheaply, riding a bike, dumpster div- asts, and make a connection with an network of punk house in the area. of these ideals becomes the responsi- ing, or letting easy subversion rule out of town band. ARRIVE: Come We cook and share food together, bility of those who live in the house, one’s ideology. Although these tactics by 8:00 pm for food, load-in, and and sometimes the dinner for Food a responsibility for teaching anyone are political, and driven by political line up arrangements. Normally, out Not Bombs is prepared with other who might infringe upon these rules, urges, it is because it has become a of town bands will be welcomed to volunteers at the house. Members of as to why such behavior is intolerable. lifestyle, that there isn’t anything in- spend the night at our house. BE A the house built a bike rack, and in the We live our lives as examples. But is herently radical about it. Quite frank- GOOD GUEST: Be courteous and backyard, what used to be an auto- it enough? ly, living a punk or DIY lifestyle might clean up after yourself. While we al- mechanics garage, is now a set of not hold the same political bearings low drinking at our house please do artist studios and a recording space The Punk House as an ideological that it used to. Can dropping out be not take this as an invitation to get called The Pickpocket. foundation is only a beginning, and considered an activists’ politics? 92 Punk Politics? Or lack thereof?… JRS Issue 9 93

“You’re just building a space to still remains vital during later life XI may become the most lasting artifact nestle in which is still attached and work endeavors. of this time. Already they are being dependent on mainstream society. An Introduction historicized by the publication the It’s like dumpster diving which only The same is valuable to Payne, who newspaper format anthology, “After exists as a byproduct of mainstream, believes, “what is most interesting is to the the Fall”. This writing is inspired by consumerist society. It is not an an- thinking where everyone I have met a style of “Combative Theory” that swer to anything, it’s semantics. It’s through this kind of community will Introduction to developed out of and in response to an argument around capitalism not be in ten years. Artists, musicians, insurrectionary anarchism and nihil- one in rebuttal of it. Dumpster diving educators, people working in institu- “After the Fall” ist communism in Europe and North in and of itself is not counter-culture, tions, people working in NGO’s, or America, disseminated through blogs it is a subculture. It’s not dangerous, the government, that’s interesting. Gabriel Saloman and free downloadable zines, and it is not inherently radical and it is re- Knowing that this was a connecting tailored to articulate the specific ab- ally nothing but a momentary tactic part of their former years in college, On March 4, 2010 students, teach- surdity of privatized education in the since it doesn’t unequivocally state and that they definitely associated ers, workers, administrators and World’s 7th largest economy. Bor- something about capitalist society.” with and were exposed to radical pol- supporters all over California (and rowing tactics most often seen in Eu- itics at one time in their life, or the fa- elsewhere) took a step out of the rope (the occupation of the Academy The question we must ask ourselves çade of radical politics, and how that classroom and into the streets to of the Arts in Vienna being a more re- is what does it mean to be radical? will affect their lives going through.” demonstrate the seriousness of their cent example) students began laying What are the ways that initiation demands for making education avail- claim to both the psychic and physi- within a community can move for- The punk house fosters an environ- able to everyone. Thousands of stu- cal territory of their schools. Some ward into progressive change? ment of critical thinking that can be dents set up road blocks and picket actions were stated to be “in defense taken into the “real world.” But the lines, marched through city streets of public education and against cuts, Payne says, “if you are not using that point is realizing that we are never and occupied buildings. Citizens of fee hikes, and layoffs”, while oth- potential for resistance, for a num- separated from this world. We must all stripes descended on their city ers demanded, quite literally, “ev- ber of things, it becomes a bunch of make a point of taking responsibility and state governments demanding erything”. The Journal of Radical friends. It stops so short it calls into for the sparks that we ignite, by con- a dramatic change in priorities - po- Shimming is reprinting the introduc- question whether or not it is express- tinuing to stir them up, and spread litical, economic & educational. If on tion to “After the Fall” in large part ly political.” them out. March 4 any of this was a surprise to because it represents an example of anyone, then they just haven’t been many things that we have tried to The punk house utilized as a struc- “Revolutionary movements do not paying attention. Concurrent with address in our investigations of hori- ture to support solidarity and enable spread by contamination but by res’ the political and financial crisis that zontal pedagogy, but it is not with- communication is only a beginning. onance. An insurrection is not like a has overwhelmed California, and out our own concerns and critiques. How can these radical strands extend forest fire [nor a prairie fire]—a lin’ much of the rest of the US, a stu- We’re doing this as an act of solidar- out into the mainstream? By situating ear process that spreads from place dent movement culture has emerged ity with students who refuse to be ourselves within Capitalist systems, to place after initial spark. It takes like a constellation of explosions passive drones in the factory-like ma- and exploiting them using revisionist the shapes of music, whose focal permeating campus after campus. chinery of educational institutions. action, only then can DIY ideology be points, though dispersed in time and Occupations, strikes, riots, battles Students who take real ownership put to greater use. Ultimately, there is space, succeed in imposing rhythm with police and administrators have of their education and recognize it’s a need for personal radicalism to ex- on their own vibrations, always tak’ developed alongside art-based activ- immense value. Learning could never tend into the public sphere. ing on more density.” ism, video work, performance and a and should never be measured by wealth of writing.The numerous texts capital. More over, we celebrate their It is the hope that an investment in —The Invisible Committee developed as “Communiques” and use of the written word and printed such politics during formative years A Point of Clarification responses to situations as they occur matter as way of creating a parrallel 94 An Introduction to the Introduction to “After the Fall” JRS Issue 9 95 discourse which can respond and XII catapults to fire the bolts with which inform social politics in surprising they used to build cars. and efficient ways. Yet like others we Introduction to wonder what it would take for these In Santiago, insurrectionary stu- students to look beyond their privi- After the Fall dents mark the 40th anniversary lege, their access to campuses and of Pinochet’s coup by attacking colleges that even before rate hikes I. Like A Winter With A police stations and shutting down barred nearly 80% of California’s Thousand Decembers the Universidad Academía de students of higher-education. How Humanismo Cristiano for ten days. can texts and ideas such as these be In Greece, they throw molotovs in No more deaths will be accepted, all translated to a language held in com- the street. For every reason under will be avenged. In France, a couple mon by most Americans with out los- the sun: in defense of their friends, of “agitators” dump a bucket of ing the poetry or power of their mes- to burn down the state, for old time’s shit over the President of Université sage? Some of my fondest memories sake, for the hell of it, to mark the Rennes 2, as he commemorates the of any classroom took place while death of a kid the cops killed for no riots of the 2006 anti-CPE struggle attending Laney Community Col- reason. For no reason. They light with a two-minute public service lege in Oakland, Ca. I took Labor Christmas trees on fire. December is announcement for corporate educa- History from a long shoreman who the new May. They smash windows, tion. The video goes up on the web. spoke a lived history, who had shut they turn up paving stones, they fight It drops into slow motion as they down the ports with many a strike; a the cops because their future went flee the mezzanine after the action, Black Cinema class with a 40 year old missing, along with the economy, a not even masked. It’s easy, it’s light, black lesbian who had the courage few years ago. They occupy buildings it’s obvious. How else could one re- to teach a class of mostly young men to find one another, to be together in spond? What more is there to say? to kill their idols and dig deeper into the same place, to have a base from We know your quality policy. A cloud what myths they’d internalized; and which to carry out raids, to drink and of thrown paper breaks like confetti a poetry class where a fellow student fuck, to talk philosophy. The cops in the space above the crowd below— was a 50 year old Cambodian refugee smash into packs of their friends on a celebratory flourish. The video cuts and life long poet who was just trying motorbikes. They hold down the to the outside of a building, scrawled to work on his English. What made heads of their friends on the pave- with huge letters: Vive la Commune. this school great was its accessib- ment and kick them in the face. lity, its eclectic and varied make-up, In Vienna, in Zagreb, in Freiburg— and the fact that students as much In Ssangyong, one thousand laid-off in hundreds of universities across as teachers taught these classes. If I workers occupy an auto factory. They central and eastern Europe—stu- had a demand it would probably be line up in formation with metal pipes, dents gather in the auditoriums of closer to the both ambigous and clear white helmets, red bandanas. Three occupied buildings, holding general expression of “We want Everything”. thousand riot cops can’t get them assemblies, discussing modalities of I would demand “More!” More out of their factory for seventy-seven self-determination. They didn’t used classes, more students, more teach- days. They say they’re ready to die to pay fees. Now they do. Before the ers, more books, more opportunities if they have to, and in the meantime vacuum of standardization called to know each other and learn from they live on balls of rice and boiled the Bologna Process, their educa- each other and to teach one another. rain. Besieged by helicopters, toxic tion wasn’t read off a pan-European More futures. tear gas, 50,000 volt guns, they fortify fast food menu. Now it is. Fuck that, positions on the roof, constructing they say. They call themselves The 96 Introduction to After the Fall JRS Issue 9 97

Academy of Refusal. They draw Project Disagree. Wheeler, Kerr, the University of California. At UC stalled, and a subsequent decision to lines in the sand. We will stay in Mrak, Dutton, Campbell, Kresge, Berkeley, over five thousand people force the issue by locking down the these spaces as long as we can, and Humanities 2….the names of the flooded Sproul Plaza. On the same majority of doors in the building re- we will talk amongst ourselves, learn buildings they take become code- day, two occupation attempts at UC sulted in a tense and protracted con- what we can learn from one another, words. They relay, resonate, commu- Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley would flict between those who viewed the on our own, together. We will take nicate. Those who take them gather result in markedly different out- occupation attempt as a “vanguard- back the time they have stolen from and consolidate their forces by tak- comes. At UCSC, a group of over ist” affront to procedural consensus us, that they’ll continue to steal, and ing more. They gauge the measure of twenty students successfully locked and those who viewed it as an effort we’ll take it back all at once, here and their common power. They know, im- down and occupied the Graduate to seize an important opportunity for now. In the time that we have thus mediately, that if they do not throw Student Commons for a full week, collective direct action. The standoff spared, one of the things we will do is down, that if they do not scatter their throwing massive Electro Commu- continued until police walked into make videos in which we exhibit our rage throughout the stolid corridors nist dance parties in the open space the building and cut through the wit, our beauty, our sovereign intel- of their universities, that if they do of Covell Commons below the bal- locks some ninety minutes later. ligence and our collective loveliness, not prove their powers of negation, cony, issuing online communiqués and we’ll send them to our comrades if they do not affirm their powers of that would circulate internationally, The split within the Wheeler audito- in California. construction, they will have failed and putting the incipient California rium that night, and the split within their generation, failed the collective, “student movement” on the map of the broader UC movement as to how In California, the kids write Occupy failed history. radical circles around the world. The the occupation at Santa Cruz was re- Everything on the walls. Demand slogans on their banners resonated garded, would largely shape both the Nothing, they write. They turn over But why wouldn’t they throw down, because the collective “we” in whose discourse and the practical possibili- dumpsters and wedge them into the and scatter, and prove, and negate, name they spoke recognized itself ties of the mobilization over the next doorways of buildings with their and affirm? After all, what the fuck therein, saw itself captured, concret- month and a half. While a second, friends locked inside. Outside, they else is there to do? ized, enacted, redistributed in their brief occupation at UCSC on Octo- throw massive Electro Communist terse formulae, their unabashed de- ber 14 would establish the tactic as dance parties. They crowd by the II. September, October, sire for totality, their articulation of a constant threat on UC campuses, thousands around occupied build- November an urgency at once symptomatic and partisans of slow and steady move- ings, and one of them rests her hand prescriptive: “We Want Everything”; ment building decried such actions as upon the police barriers. A cop tells A particular political sequence is al- “We Are The Crisis.” irresponsible adventurism. This was her to move her hand. She says: ways at once discrete and continuous, an antagonism that would persist “no.” He obliterates her finger with at once a singularity and a relay. And At UC Berkeley, a more ambitious throughout the fall—a familiar split a baton. She has reconstructive sur- the series of militant occupations occupation attempt would fail on the between “Trotskyist” and “ultra- gery in the morning and returns to that would sweep the state in Novem- same night that UCSC succeeded. leftist” orientations within the move- defend the occupation in the after- ber both emerged from and exploded Having arrived with equipment to ment, the former holding fast to the noon. We Are the Crisis, they say. the limits of a political conjuncture lock down the doors, a group called supposedly democratic framework of They start blogs called Anti-Capital whose parameters were established for the Berkeley General Assembly— General Assemblies while the second Projects; We Want Everything; Like in September. a mass gathering of some 300 people insisted that actions themselves were Lost Children, the better to distribute on the evening after the walkout—to the means through which the move- their communiqués and insurrection- On September 24, the first day of the occupy Wheeler Hall. Despite draw- ment was both organized and pushed ary pamphlets. Ergo, really living fall quarter at most UC campuses, a ing wide spontaneous support from forward. communism must be our goal, they faculty-organized walkout over the the assembly when they read the oc- write. We Have Decided Not to Die, handling of the budget crisis during cupation statement from Santa Cruz, While a massive organizing confer- they whisper. Students in Okinawa the summer erupted into the largest any effort to bring their proposed ence on October 24 would call for a send them letters of solidarity signed coordinated protest in the history of action to a vote was interminably statewide “Day of Action” on March 98 Introduction to After the Fall JRS Issue 9 99

4, a small group of UC Berkeley grad group nonetheless succeeded in draw- this explosive sequence, with its clear the second floor, barricading hall- students—not content to wait until ing strong support from a crowd that affirmation of tactical solidarity way doors with chairs, tables, truck the spring semester to act—launched gathered outside the building, and across campuses, no one could have tie-downs, U-locks, and ropes, and a website and signature page calling the aftershocks of that spontaneous anticipated the rupture that occurred tirelessly defending the doors against for an indefinite student, staff, faculty solidarity would make themselves at Wheeler Hall on November 20th. the cops throughout the day. Outside, strike beginning on Nov. 18, when the felt two days later. Later that night students pulled fire alarms, cancel- UC Regents would meet in UCLA to at UCLA, a group of forty students III. Vortex: Wheeler ling classes and vacating most of the vote on a proposed 32% student fee occupied Campbell Hall, successfully buildings on campus. Support flowed increase. It’s notable that although locking down the doors with impres- At 6:38 am on Friday morning, a post to the occupation, drawn in part by this call for mass action was most sive barricades and holding the build- went up on Facebook: “UC Berkeley the massive and disproportional po- actively pushed forward by many of ing for over twenty-four hours before is Occupied. Wheeler Hall has been lice presence that gathered through- the same people who had attempted abandoning the occupation on the taken by students after Thursday’s out the morning and swelled to hun- the occupation of Wheeler on Sept. morning of the 20th. On the after- vote by the UC Regents to increase dreds of riot cops by the afternoon. 24, it was also supported by represen- noon of the 19th, UC Santa Cruz stu- fees by over 32%. After two days of Inside the building, police snarled tatives of the same groups that had dents, already holding down Kresge marches, protests and rallies, stu- threats at those on the other side— most vocally opposed it. But even if Townhall, escalated their occupation dents have locked down the doors get ready for your beat-down—and the antagonisms within the move- by storming the main administration against campus police while support- pounded against the doors in a frus- ment that had emerged through Oc- building. They held Kerr Hall for ers have surrounded the building.” trated effort to break through the tober and early November would not three days, locking it down after their interior blockade. Outside—holding be entirely displaced by the events demands were rejected on the night At 6:38 am, the last item of this re- their ground against police attacks as that unfolded during the week of the of the 21st, and vacating the building port was an effort at self-fulfilling the cops set up metal barriers around strike, at least the tedium of ideologi- without charges after it was raided by prophecy. In fact, only a few dozen the building—thousands of students cal playfighting would be. police the following morning. At UC supporters clustered around one side effectively laid siege to the build- Davis, about fifty students marched of the huge neo-classical building at ing. Or rather, they laid siege to the On Nov. 18 and 19, thousands of pro- into Mrak Hall on the afternoon of the center of the Berkeley campus, besiegers. testers from across the state clashed the 19th, their numbers rising to 150 watching the windows. But twelve with riot cops outside the Regents through the afternoon, with doz- hours later, when police finally broke There were various powers of resis- meetings at UCLA, chasing the Re- ens of supporters outside the doors. through the occupiers’ barricades, tance. Across the pedestrian cor- gents back to their cars as they were Eight hours and sixty riot cops later, citing forty people for misdemeanor ridor on the west side of the build- escorted from the building. The pro- fifty-two arrests ensued when those trespassing and then releasing them ing, students and workers formed a tests were met with a repressive po- inside refused police orders to dis- without cuffs, they were greeted by a hard blockade, sometimes a dozen lice response, including taser attacks perse. After spending the night at cheering, lamplit crowd of some two rows deep, preventing any passage and eighteen arrests over two days. Yolo County Jail, they drove back to thousand people who had packed throughout much of the afternoon. On the evening of Nov. 18, an oc- campus and occupied another build- around police barriers all day. On the hour, many students attempt- cupation attempt at Berkeley would ing the next day, taking Dutton Hall ed to organize rushes against police be foiled for the second time, when a for eight hours with a group of over In between, everything swirled in and lines around the perimeter, timed by team of about forty attempted to lock one hundred, forcing the administra- around the still edifice of Wheeler. An the tolling of the bell-tower and or- down the Architects and Engineers tion to call in riot police again before occupation is a vortex, not a protest. ganized by runners between corners building—home of Capital Projects, walking away. Shortly after it had been locked down of the building. At around 4:00pm, a Real Estate Services, and the Office in the morning, police broke into the column of sixteen riot police lined up of Sustainability. Forced to abandon In a word: between Nov. 18-Nov. 22 a basement floor, beating and arresting at the southeast corner of Wheeler, their attempt when administrators “movement” became an occupation three students on trumped-up felony marching toward the backs of the locked themselves in their offices, the movement. But even in the midst of charges. Occupiers then retreated to students and workers amassed at the 100 Introduction to After the Fall JRS Issue 9 101 barriers. A gathering crowd, drawn displacement that was audible in the after their outer defenses collapsed, This essentially powerless posi- by cell phone communications and chants of the crowd: from “Whose they ceded most of the building to the tion—the reactive and isolated po- twitter feeds, fanned out to surround University?! Our University!” to police. But the police were themselves sition of the police, and by exten- the advancing column, blockading a “Who owns Wheeler?! We own enclosed by the barricades they had sion the administration—was never path along the east side of the build- Wheeler!” “Wheeler” is the proper established to keep the crowd outside more evident than at the end of the ing and locking arms around the name of this displacement, because at bay. The space was constituted by a night, after the occupiers had been cops until they charged a weak point the building that it designates be- double barricade—by the barricades cited and released, after they had ad- in the chain, beating one student on came—in an unexpected instant of the occupiers and the barricades of dressed their supporters through a the ground with batons and shooting stretched out through a morning, an the police. This was the convoluted megaphone, after the crowd began another in the stomach with a rubber afternoon, an evening—the site of a topology of the occupation: the space to disperse of their own accord. The bullet. When later in the afternoon it displacement of the opposition be- inside was opened up by being locked barriers cordoning off the plaza out- became clear that the police would tween a mass movement and the sup- down (a refusal to let anyone in); the side Wheeler were withdrawn and the eventually break down the barricades posedly vanguardist tactic hitherto space outside was closed off by a majority of the police began to file on the second floor, self-organizing perceived as the fetish of a few ultra- state of siege (a refusal to let anyone away, until two weak rows remained, groups took up tactical positions left adventurists. A displacement, out). There was an intimacy at a dis- guarding the building at the top of at all possible points of exit—even not a fusion. These poles persisted in tance between these two spaces—the the steps, under the lights cast across those reportedly accessible by un- pockets among the crowd, but their affective bond of a shared struggle— the neo-classical façade. A languid derground tunnels—blockading the conflict was simply not what mat- that communicated itself through the crowd began to assemble at the bot- loading bays of an adjacent building tered on that day. Whether or not all walls and through the windows, that tom of the steps, just standing there, with dumpsters and forming a hu- interested parties might choose to de- crackled through the air around cam- aimlessly, calming staring across the man barricade across the doors of scribe the event in these terms, what pus, that carried through a rainstorm unimpeded space between them and Doe Library to the north of Wheeler. happened was that a “we” number- in the early afternoon, that enabled the cops. A parent walked up with ing two thousand, surrounding the the occupation to persist. That it two children, perhaps four and six To turn the campus into a militarized perimeter of Wheeler Hall, declared was possible to hold the space inside, years old, casually pointing up to- warzone was the choice of the admin- collective ownership not just of the despite the immediate efforts of the ward the stationary soldiers of prop- istration and the police; but it was “University” (an abstraction), but cops to take it back: it was the con- erty. Everyone might have whispered also an implicit taunt, a challenge of a particular building, a concrete crete realization of this power that the same thing at the same time: look from which students and workers instantiation of university property. activated the energy and resistance of how small they look, how sad and out refused to back down, making it ob- And when this happened the prior- the crowd outside. That the material of place and ridiculous. vious that they would not allow the ity of factionalist politics that had support of the crowd outside was un- occupiers to be spirited away to jail defined the movement for the previ- yielding, that it refused to be pacified The illusory power of the police in handcuffs without a potentially ous two months was shattered by the or exhausted: it was this collective throughout the day was in fact the explosive confrontation. As Berke- immediacy of an objective situation. determination that empowered those power of the contradiction of which ley grad student George Ciccarielo- A movement to “Save Public Edu- inside to hold the doors throughout their presence was merely an index. Mahler’s particularly canny account cation” had become indiscernible, the afternoon. It became increasingly It was the power of the people inside, of the day put it: “Let this be clear: within an unquantifiable durée, from evident that the police—functioning the power of the people outside—the if the students were arrested and car- a militant desire to communize pri- in this case as the repressive appara- power of people, that is—to suspend ried out, there was going to be a fight. vate property. tus of the administration—were ef- the rule of property. A riot? Perhaps (this much depended fectively trapped between two zones on the police). A fight? Mos def.” Several of the occupiers would later over which they had no real control: IV. Collateral Damage refer to the “medieval” character of the area outside their own barricades This commitment of the crowd out- the tactical maneuvers that day: hav- and the area inside the second floor Property is one of the knots that ties side the occupation entailed a slight ing retreated to an inner chamber, doors defended by the occupiers. together multiple levels of the UC 102 Introduction to After the Fall JRS Issue 9 103 crisis, and that binds it with the larg- administrative growth by the UCLA rising student fees. Thus, reductions collateral damage.” er crisis of the state and the global Faculty Association “estimated that to state funding actually help the UC economy. Citing a twenty percent cut UC would have $800 million more to improve its bond rating, because V. Communization in state funding for the University, each year if senior management had while state “education funds” cannot UC President Mark Yudof declared grown at the same rate as the rest of be used as bond collateral, private The collateralization of student fees a state of “extreme fiscal emergency” the university since 1997, instead of student fees can—and cuts to state thus puts into question the very fu- in July 2009—a measure intended to four times faster.” In other words, funding provide a pretext for in- ture of the university and the class-re- legitimate and expedite a slash-and- while UCOP continues to point to creased fees. On the list of priorities lations it is called upon to maintain. burn approach of the administration economic necessities and legislative driving the substitution of private As elsewhere in our post-industrial to dealing with the budget shortfall. priorities as the root causes of the for public funding, “construction,” economy, the massive personal debt It has been the mantra of the UC ad- crisis, it is a plain fact that the exces- as Meister put it, “comes ahead of required to keep the university and its ministration over the past few years sive and inexplicable growth of the instruction.” building projects churning along in- that the state is an “unreliable part- administrative class itself accounts dicate the unsustainability of current ner,” that the crisis of the California for the same amount of money—this In light of such revelations, to hold class relations over the long-term. economy coupled with the refusal year alone—as the budget shortfall. that “Sacramento” is the primary Something has to break. If the weak- of the state government to prioritize source of the UC’s woes amounts to ness of the American economy was, support for public education neces- Even more resonant, particularly for either naiveté or willful obscuran- in the years leading up to the finan- sitates a program of increasingly dra- the occupation movement, has been tism. Not only are current reductions cial collapse of 2008, exacerbated by conian cuts and austerity measures. the role of capital projects in the UC in state funding a drop in the bucket the securitization of household debt And indeed, many within the uni- crisis. On August 6, the SF Chronicle of UC’s total endowment—and noth- via all kinds of exotic instruments, the versity have accepted some version reported that despite a supposed fis- ing compared to the growing revenue situation is little different with stu- of this argument, urging students cal emergency that had forced lay- of the university’s profit-generating dents. UC’s bondholders bear nearly to direct blame for the crisis toward offs, furloughs, and increased class wings—it is also the case that UC ad- the same relationship to student bor- Sacramento and to acknowledge the sizes, UC had agreed to lend the state ministration has powerful motives to rowing as an investment bank bears economic “realities” of the moment: $200 million, money that would be both collaborate with the continuing to the homeowner underwater on her Proposition 13 has handicapped the paid back over three years at 3.2 per- divestment of state funding and to subprime mortgage. In both cases, capacity of the state to draw revenue cent interest and allocated to stalled divert its own resources from spend- the fiction of a “sound investment,” from property taxes since 1978, and capital projects. Money for construc- ing on instruction. For many, this of a present sacrifice which will pay money for public services has dried tion projects, it seemed, was readily state of affairs is both obvious and off in the future, occludes what is es- up accordingly; the crisis of the uni- available where money for the educa- unsurprising, and perhaps no one has sentially a form of plunder, occludes versity budget is part and parcel of a tional mission of the university was articulated its stakes more plainly a present and future immiseration larger economic crisis effecting every not. In mid-October, Bob Meister, a than Berkeley graduate student An- which will, eventually, undermine the sector in the state and taking its toll UCSC Professor and President of the nie McClanahan in an address to the foundations of our consumer-driven across the country. Why should the Council of UC Faculty Associations, UC Regents prior to their Novem- society. University of California claim any published an exposé making clear the ber 19 decision to pass the proposed exceptional status? link between proposed fee increases fee increases. “I’m here today to tell Given the UC’s propensity to favor and capital projects: since 2004, all you,” said McClanahan, “that when construction over instruction, or It has become increasingly clear that student fees have been pledged by students and their parents have to more bluntly, buildings over people, such narratives don’t add up; both UC as collateral for bonds used to borrow at 8 or 10 or 14% interest so it is hardly surprising that student their credibility and plausible justifi- fund construction projects. UC re- that the UC can maintain its credit activists would target those build- cations for their acceptance slip away tains an excellent bond rating, superi- rating and its ability to borrow at a ings as sites of resistance. The failed rapidly as one looks into the structure or to the state of California’s, in part .2% lower rate of interest, we the stu- Berkeley occupation of the Nov.18 – of the UC budget. A recent report on because that rating is guaranteed by dents are not only collateral, we are the first day of the strike—targeted 104 Introduction to After the Fall JRS Issue 9 105 the Capital Projects and Real-Estate relations immediately invites con- winnings are likely to be mooted, in the immediate formation of “com- services offices, departments respon- flict with the police. One also risks the long-term, by overwhelming eco- munes,” of zones of activity removed sible for the construction and ad- conflict with the larger mass of the nomic forces, then occupation is less from exchange, money, compulsory ministration of all campus buildings. student-worker movement and activ- potent as leverage for negotiation labor, and the impersonal domina- The statements which the occupiers ist faculty, who are loath to extend than as a practical attempt to remove tion of the commodity form. Com- released via a blog entitled Anti- the struggle beyond reform of the oneself, to whatever degree possible, munism, in this sense, is neither an Capital Projects clarify the terms of university. The radical stream within from existing regimes of relation: to endpoint nor a goal but a process. the struggle, suggesting that what the student movement, on the other others and to the use of space. The Not a noun but a verb. There is is broadly at stake are two different hand, sees the fight for increased ac- occupiers, in this sense, refuse to nothing toward which one transi- visions of the use of space, and by cess to the university as futile without “take what they can get.” They would tions, only the transition itself, only extension, two different regimes of situating that fight within a much rather “get what they can take.” (This a long process of metabolizing exist- property. Or rather, property and its broader critique of political econo- is how some fellow travelers in New ing goods and capitals and removing negation. my. Even if achieved, present reforms York, participants in a series of in- them from the regimes of property of the UC will merely slow its even- spiring occupations last year, have and value. Judged in relation to such These texts fall in line with the tual privatization, and the crisis of put it). An occupation is not a token a project, the occupations of the fall broadly anarchist or anti-state com- the university remains connected to illegalism to be bargained away in are modest achievements—experi- munist perspective of the earlier oc- a much larger crisis of employment exchange for whatever modest de- ments with a practice that might find cupations, in which the horizon of and, in turn, a crisis of capitalism mands the authorrities are willing a fuller implementation in the future. occupation, its project so to speak, that permits of no viable solution. to grant, since this only legitimates There is an exemplary character to leads far beyond the university. To In other words, the jobs for which the existing authorities in exchange the actions—they are attempts to the extent that occupation offers, the university ostensibly prepares its for whatever modest demands those generalize a tactic that is also a strat- hypothetically, the opportunity to re- students no longer exist, even as they authorities are willing to grant. De- egy, a means that is also an end. But move a building from the regime of are asked to pony up more and more mands are always either too small can the tactics elaborated within the property—in other words, to abolish money for a devalued diploma. The or too large; too “rational” or too university escape its confines and be- its status as “capital” and to cancel pamphlet which has become a key incoherent. Occupations themselves, come generalized in the kinds of plac- one’s subordination to owners and reference for the occupation move- however, occur as material inter- es—apartment buildings, factories— ownership—it forms a tactic little ment—Communiqué from an Ab- ventions into the space and time of where they would become part of an different than “seizure of the means sent Future—signals these positions capitalism. They are attempts to “live extensive process of communization? of production,” one with a venerable with its title. The prospective future communism; spread anarchy,” as the In a sense, the byline of the move- history and a wide extension beyond of the college graduate is erased by Tiqqun pamphlet Call (an influential ment—occupy everything, demand the university. In particular, one the crisis of the economy, even as text for the occupation movement) nothing—is prospective; it imagines thinks of workplace occupations and any alternative future made possible puts it. This slogan was written on all itself as occurring in an insurrection- expropriations and housing occupa- through insurrection is rendered in- of the chalkboards during the Nov. ary moment which has not yet mate- tions. With unemployment reaching visible by capitalist cynicism. The fu- 20th occupation of Wheeler. rialized. This is its strength; its ability staggering proportions and with mil- ture is doubly absent. to make an actual, material interven- lions of bank-owned and foreclosed The communiqué and some of the tion in the present that fast-forwards homes standing empty, occupation The radical or anti-reformist posi- other texts associated with the au- us to an insurrectionary future. Be- seems like a tactic that is itself a strat- tion within the movement has often tumn occupations link up with what is yond such a conflagration, there is egy—a form of militancy that is not insisted upon a refusal of demands as often referred to as the “communiza- really no escaping one’s reinscription a means to an end but an end in and the rationale for occupation—upon tion current”—a species of ultraleft- within a series of reforms and de- of itself. a refusal to negotiate one’s depar- ism and insurrectionary anarchism mands, regardless of the stance one ture from the occupied building on that refuses all talk of a transition to takes. Only by passing into a moment But any such threat to property the basis of concessions won. If any communism, insisting, instead, upon of open insurrection can demands be 106 Introduction to After the Fall JRS Issue 9 107 truly and finally escaped. of those who want to build a “mass police and administrators, plastering Everything; Like Lost Children: and democratic” movement, the final the walls with slogans, turning class- this negation opens onto a space of The prospective dimension of the synthesis of which can be found in rooms into organizing spaces, study uncertain drift—a dérive—whereby a earlier positions is confirmed by the the “mass actions” undertaken by spaces, sleeping spaces, distributing desire for totality gives way onto the fact that both the Nov. 20th Berkeley hundreds in November. This seems food and literature in the lobby, and navigation of the not-all. We are the occupation and the Santa Cruz Kerr false to us since, in retrospect, the holding meetings, dance parties and Crisis. This is the only sense in which Hall occupation, the successor occu- smaller actions resolve into the many movie-screenings in the lecture hall. one might affirm a “movement.” pations, did have a list of demands— facets and eruptions of a singular This attempt to put the building un- demands which had a certain tactical “mass movement” dispersed in time der student-led control turned out to Nous Sommes le Pouvoir, the slogan logic in developing solidarity, and and place. The smaller actions were be too much for the administration, of May ’68, foregrounds the capac- expanding the action, but that also what it took to build up to something and early in the morning of Dec. 11, ity of the “we,” the positive power of suffered from the problems of scale, larger. Again: it is not a question of the last day of the occupation, 66 solidarity. We Are The Crisis would coherence and “achievability” that choosing between these two sides, people were arrested without warn- seem to cede some of this power, plague the demand as form. None- nor of synthesizing them, but rather ing as they slept. That same evening, indexing the being of the we to ca- theless, what happened in both those of displacing the priority of this op- in response, a group marched on the tastrophe, and thereby to a degree instances was a massive radicaliza- position. The real dialectic is between Chancellor’s house carrying torches, of powerlessness: to conditions that tion of the student body, a massive negation and experimentation: acts destroying planters, windows, and are out of control, precisely beyond escalation, one that was hardly at of resistance and refusal which also lamps. What was originally conceived the measure our capacities. We Are all countered by its superscription enable an exploration of new social as a largely non-confrontational ac- The Crisis inscribes the “we” as both inside this or that call for reform. At relations, new uses of space and time. tion quickly became highly confron- symptom and prescription, without Kerr Hall, the fact that the occupi- tational. There is nothing new with- attempting to evade their entangle- ers asked the administration for this These two poles can’t be separated out a negation of the old. By the same ment. And this entanglement—our or that concession was superseded, out, since the one passes into the oth- measure, even if the people occupying condition—poses a problem for in material practice, by the fact that er with surprising swiftness. Without Wheeler on Nov. 20th had little time power per se. Nous Sommes le Pou- they had, for the moment, displaced confrontation, experimentation risks to reinvent their relations, inasmuch voir speaks from and for collective their partners in negotiation: while collapsing back into the existing so- as they spent most of their time capacities; We Are the Crisis writes they negotiated, they were at the cial relations that form their back- fighting the cops for control of the the collective that resists, that experi- same time in the Chancellor’s office, drop—they risk becoming mere life- doors, what emerged was a structure ments, into the crisis of capital: into eating his food, and watching videos style or culture, recuperated as one of solidarity, of spontaneous, self- objective conditions. But if we recall on his television. They did in fact get more aestheticized museum exhibit organized resistance that obliterated that, etymologically, “crisis” means what they could take, and when the of liberal tolerance toward student any distinction between those inside discrimination, decision, then the moment came, they didn’t hesitate to radicals. But to the extent that any and those outside, and that passed, slogan is stripped of any teleological convert the sacrosanct property—the experiment really attempts to take by way of political determination, determination of the “we” as simply copy machines and refrigerators— control of space and time and social through the police lines meant to en- an “expression” of the economy.” To into barricades. relations, it will necessarily entail an force this barrier. There is no negation decide upon the we, upon the collec- antagonistic relation to power. This of the old which does not provoke the tive, as both symptom and prescrip- VI. We are the Crisis was evident when, during the week emergence of something new. tion, within and against the objective before exams reserved for study- conditions of capital: this is the vec- Some writers have concluded that ing (Dec. 7–11), Berkeley students Project Disagree; Academy of Refus- tor of decision along which the cur- the sweep of the fall’s events pres- marched back into Wheeler and held al; Research & Destroy; Anti-Capital rent occupation movement attempts ents a dialectic between the “adven- an open, unlocked occupation of the Projects: the rhetoric of negation to push those objective conditions turist” action of small groups, and unused parts of the building, negoti- conforms to the topology of the toward a breaking point. the back-footed, reactive discourse ating an informal agreement with the blockade, the barricade. We Want 108 JRS Issue 9 JRS Issue 9 109

XIII Wait, so am I supposed to be talking promising directions in terms of the ideas…(tape glitch)… to be a part of to a tape recorder or to you Dan? next steps in the “work”—the politi- this history that she’s a part of. I’ll January 7, 2010 cal work, and the cultural work, the let Mike talk now that I’ve gotten a DW: Well, this is Dan and I can ask spiritual work involved in making a little into the details of the meeting… in Reggie’s House Mike a question, just an open ques- new world. A new reality for humans Oh.. one last thing, that is to ask tion, which is how do you think this and for the World. It was very affirm- him a question… I want to note that Soul Food meeting went or how did you leave ing because, of course, one of these Grace was really a striking presence feeling from from this meeting? people is Grace Lee Boggs, who is at the table, because immediately Restaurant in one of the elders of the progressive when she opened up with her re- MW: I left feeling really good! I left movements and the activist cultures marks, you could tell that this person Detroit, Michigan. with a feeling of warmth, like there and the forward looking people in has facilitated soooo many meetings were personal connections made, the United States. She’s 94 years old and sat through soooo many gath- DW: We have some remarks and first and that felt that they will develop. and speaks with a kind of authority erings. She knows what to do, she impressions coming out of a meeting It seemed worthwhile to come and coming from her memory, the reach knows how to get people on the same that, I, Dan Wang, and Mike Wolf to have had to articulate ourselves to of her memory and experience, and page—immediately!—and she knows over the noon hour, about 11 actu- these people, and then I think we got the fact that she’s been involved in how to gather the spirit of a meeting ally, and didn’t leave until 2 o’clock, a lot of positive feedback. I felt affec- so many different kinds of move- of people who are all coming in with a meeting at the Boggs Center with tion coming my way, frankly. ments and offshoot causes, and has things on their minds, various daily Grace Lee Boggs and Rich Feld- a really comprehensive understand- agendas. They’re all coming in scat- man and Shea Howell and Barb, DW: That’s great! ing of activist work and progressive tered but they’ve carved out some Larry, and Andrew Plisner. Just 6 of work. Particularly activist work, Jus- moment in their day and she’s good them and 2 of us, getting down some MW: What about you? tice work, here in Detroit. She’s lived at bringing everyone’s attention, at thought on how that meeting went. in that house.. she opened up the turning everyone’s heads in one di- DW: I felt really good coming out of meeting with a little bit about herself rection. I could tell, I could really tell, MW: We had a bit of an agenda that meeting, I still feel good about and she told us, and reminded her that this woman has a lot of experi- that we attempted to follow… well, it. I’m going to have a good memory colleagues, she’d been living in that ence and has a great talent for orga- I mean… no. Grace set the agenda. of this meeting. Encounter… I think house for 50 years…is that what she nizing. It was neat to just learn from Dan and I were there representing maybe in the future we’ll have “meet- said? seeing her in action, at work. So, let a kind of working group that we’re ings” but I classify this as an encoun- me ask Mike, what were your expec- apart of. A group of people who’ve ter where we came into contact, we MW: Sounds about right, yeah… tations? Were they met? And where been talking for a couple of years made contact with a group of people, do you see things going? now, something we’re calling the a group of individuals who were real- DW: She said she’d been living in midwest radical cultural corridor and ly welcoming and really excited to see that house in Detroit for about 50 MW: I guess I didn’t go in with a we were there to share with the folks what we were doing. About halfway years and over those decades many, lot of expectations. I sort of under- at the Boggs center, what we’ve done through the meeting I really started many, many notable and not so rec- stood that Detroit, this part of De- and what we would maybe like to do, to get the feeling that this is one of ognized people who are working for troit, these people doing this work specifically for the US Social Forum those situations where we came into fundamental change and political in Detroit, definitely has a kind of in June 2010 and the Allied Media contact with a group of people who work, resistance work of all kind, strength… I mean, they talk openly Conference, perhaps - they happen had been having very similar conver- justice work of all kinds, have come about Love and the necessity to build both in June. But also just to make sations that we have had, been hav- through there and made stops. That Love into this movement. I think an introduction and start establish- ing, in as much or greater detail than immediately made me feel that we it’s partly just because I’m used to ing some personal connections. we have been having, and who were were apart of something, that we the world as we know it, I was over- intuiting many of the same kinds of were apart of a stream of visitors, and whelmingly, pleasantly surprised by 110 A Conversation on a meeting at the Boggs Center JRS Issue 9 111 just having felt that strength in this are many many unemployed young thinking similar things and working was kind of like “this is what I’m see- encounter. This wasn’t about debat- men who feel like they have no future with similar concerns, I think that ing.” Later on she told us a very short ing or judgment—which isn’t to say and nothing to live for. When I was occurred to me at some point also. story about how she was in some gath- that people didn’t have critical minds thinking about calling attention to I guess I was just thinking about my ering in Paris where they were trying who were present… I guess I feel like that problem, I thought back to what own past, the past decade of my life. to re-start the Fourth international… I’m conditioned to go into something Rich said about this not being a time At some point I realized “Oh, I guess and this was in 1948 or something like like a meeting with a certain set of when the tide is going to be turned by I’ve been working towards this and that. So she’s really been in the thick defenses up and they were totally un- winning an argument. I thought that I had no idea.” I have experienced of revolutionary work for a long long necessary in this case. So that’s a kind fit very well with this thing that we moments like that a few times in the time. She was, like “look, I’m seeing of expectation I think. see, this despair. You’re not going to past couple of years. I was reading things I haven’t seen before.” She waken people from their despair by these books or texts because I felt like spoke of novel and promising condi- They were incredibly generous—fed presenting to them a kind of strong it was all I could do, or researching tions. That really set the tone. Every- us, gave us stacks of interesting look- argument, a convincing argument. these subjects and possibilities be- thing is on the table, and from that ing reading material. (I got a T-shirt You have to connect to them on a cause I felt like it was all I could do. moment forward the way we talked also.) It felt homey. I wanted to be much more profound level that has It wasn’t as if the things they were from both our side and their side, it inspired and learn, and that hap- to do with showing them examples saying to me sounded radical in the was like Mike said, it was just under- pened. I feel inspired, and welcome. of how to live and showing them that context of the things I’ve been work- stood that big changes are coming. It You talked about at one point that there is a future different than our ing on and thinking about for the is inevitable, it is upon us, and it is up you don’t change people’s minds present reality, by making the world past decade. They just made perfect to us to help shape that future. by arguing and convincing people. different. It was Grace who actually sense to me. Which is amazing, be- That’s not how this is going to work. first dropped the term “affects” and cause that just doesn’t happen most Another thing I wanted to say It’s going to work by giving examples she was making reference to the book of the time. I spent the holidays with though. Mike, you said that this was and.. I forget the phrase you used… “Commonwealth” by Antonio Ne- my family and my parents, they are a very loving atmosphere… that it “Affective…” gri and Michael Hardt, one of many friendly about it, but they just don’t was just about loving and accept- titles that the Boggs Center people have the same kind of intellectual ing and it wasn’t about judging or DW: I think you’re referring to an made reference to. We were clearly make up around this stuff, and it al- criticizing. I totally share that un- earlier conversation… I think it was in the presence of knowledgeable ways sounds like it’s out of left field derstanding of the vibe. It was very Rich (Feldman) who said something and disciplined readers. That was a when I relate my ideas observations much a kind of loving house and it about “this work before us is not re- whole other part of the meeting that to them, much less to my cousins. It was amazing to share in that atmo- ally about winning arguments any- was very exciting for me - just to be was gratifying. sphere. At the same time, I did detect more.” That stuck in my mind for the among people who are constantly at least a couple of times, from both next segment of the conversation. I learning and who want to share their DW: It was interesting to me, again Rich and Grace, especially at the be- went back to it for a moment when knowledge. That aside, that word to go back to how the gathering ginning some self-definition. I’m not I was wanting to bring up another of “affects” came up in relation to Ne- was opened, with Grace just saying sure they were 100% sure of where the great challenges of our condition: gri, and that has everything to do straight out that she feels that this is a we were coming from. I remember the widespread despair felt by many with awakening people from their de- really special time in the history of the Rich, when were going around giv- many millions of human beings… spair and fighting that battle. planet, that we have a great opportu- ing introductions, he kind of served probably billions at this point… That nity, and that a lot of the things that notice in this interesting way. He despair, whether you find it in inner- MW: What you said about this feel- people have been talking and dream- stated very clearly that the old Left- city Detroit or inner-city Chicago or ing that we were intuiting similar ing about for a long time may start to ist frameworks and languages and in some depressed, struggling rural directions in thought as they were, come to fruition, may start to come to vocabularies are not going to serve us areas in between those two cities… that we had an encounter with an- reality. That was kind of amazing to and people are clinging to them be- or in the Middle East where there other group of people that have been hear. And she was not flaky about it. It cause they want certainty. 112 A Conversation on a meeting at the Boggs Center JRS Issue 9 113

MW: I remember that, absolutely. I being introduced as an idea, a way XIV and rural areas, the availability of felt it. of thinking, but it was usually pretty land, fuel, water; whether they are abstract. Yet, I want to echo what LIVING FOR able to grow their own food or have DW: It was kind of like—“we’re done Mike just said, it made me feel kind to import it from long distances (con- with that”—the people sitting at this of lucky to be alive right now. To ac- CHANGE: suming tons of fuel and requiring, table are done with that. Fortunately, tually hear somebody say, oh well we often carcinogenic, preservatives and we are done with that too! I could see were talking about bioregionalism Re-Imagining additives); how they dispose of waste, that they’d been through their battles back then without really understand- how they educate and entertain with other Leftists. They’re so done ing what it might look like, and now America, themselves, what historic struggles with certain kinds of old patterns of she’s starting to see things that fit and events they remember and tell thinking and insistences. These folks what she talked about then. Which is Re-Creating each other stories about. are open and ready to be creative. pretty great. The other thing I want MRCC artists are cultural cre- to say about Shea, who was a really Ourselves atives who recognize that our world MW: Yeah, that was a potent mo- bright voice in the mix of things— and especially the United States ment. There’s also something Shea I’m so happy she was there—she Grace Lee Boggs are in the middle of a huge cultural said that I was reminded of. Shea was the one that wanted to get into revolution. So their maps provide said at one point that she feels a lot some project ideas and project pos- As we move towards the 2nd USSF all kinds of information about city of the ideas about bio-regionalism sibilities. She talked about organizing that will bring 15,000–20,000 people life and rural life, about who lives and the early ecological thought that some sort of session or discussion to Detroit in June, new visitors to the where and when, about gentrification were talked about in the late 60s and gathering kind of thing, something at Boggs Center are giving me a deeper and struggles against gentrification, early 70s are now actually becoming the Social Forum, around the theme understanding of the energies stirring development and struggles against reality from her point of view. That’s of Place-based Politics. That led into in our country at this very special it, industrialization and de-industri- exciting. For someone who was an a whole other interesting thread of time on the clock of the world. alization, current and increasingly adult at that time, to hear her saying conversation about what that might For example, on a recent snowy urgent challenges to create the world that, was very powerful. It goes to be. All of us have gotten our ideas afternoon, we enjoyed a conversa- anew. show that there is a lot from that time about place and the relationship be- tion with Dan Wang and Mike Wolf, I was especially impressed with that doesn’t bear dismissing, that’s tween place and politics (…) two artists from the Midwest Radical the information these maps provide still really useful, and has taken hold Cultural Corridor (MRCC), Dan about Native American communi- in the culture. To me, it’s just kind of [tape broken] was born and raised in Saginaw, ties because MRCC mapmakers rec- ingrained… Michigan, and now lives in Madison. ognize that in this period we have so Mike, when not roaming, is from the much to learn from indigenous peo- DW: What is? Chicago area. ples about the need to think ahead Before our conversation I had seven generations when we make ev- MW: Some of the ideas about ecol- viewed maps mainly as aids to get eryday decisions. ogy and place. She used the word drivers from one place to another. Talking with Dan and Mike, I “bioregionalism”: a holistic way of Dan and Mike gave me a sense of also got a sense of the huge changes thinking about politics and ecology, how maps created by artists not only that have taken place in the world power and the economy. expand our knowledge and imagina- and in young people since I became tions but can also help us arrive at a radical nearly 70 years ago. DW: I remember her saying that in life-changing decisions. When I moved from New York the 60s and 70s when people started MRCC maps provide a picture to Detroit in the middle of the 20th talking about bioregionalism, it was of the many cultures in the Midwest. century, most radicals, myself includ- often in a theoretical way, that it was They tell us how people live in cities ed, thought mainly in terms of Race 114 LIVING FOR CHANGE… JRS Issue 9 115 and Class, Blacks and Whites, Work- XV stronghold of downtown and into ers and Capitalists, I had no idea that the regal ruins residential Detroit. one day I would find myself grow- First Encounter Where and how does the awakening ing older in a country where whites happen? are the minority and people of color at the Boggs from Latin America, Asia and Africa The Boggs Center is one of the puls- are the New Majority. Center ing hearts, keeping the hibernating I never dreamed that Detroit, dragon warm until the days lengthen. once the national and international Dan S. Wang We came as visitors, hoping to find symbol of the miracles of industri- 11 January 2010 our own sustenance. By the first half alization, would become the world hour of our three hour encounter, symbol of the devastation of dein- I wanted to know, who is this person we’d been assured that our presence dustrialization. Or that, as a result of Grace Lee Boggs? After having at- was a gift to them. Grace testified to the new information technology, only tended her big 94th birthday party the significance of the Call To Farms one in ten workers actually works in last summer in Detroit, which fol- book, the way it brought the strands manufacturing and the number of lowed the close of the Allied Media of culture, economics, and place to- workers outside factory walls exceeds Conference and brought many of the gether. The generosity of gratitude those inside. visiting media activists into contact was heart-stopping, and almost em- It never occurred to me that with longtime Detroit civil rights, barrassing. As so often has been the eventually my identity would be labor, environmental, social justice, case, I was grateful for Mike’s pres- shaped not mainly by my ethnic- and other activists, I must say, I had ence. Here, we could be a little em- ity, class or gender but by how I re- only curiosity and a desire to get barrassed together. sponded to the challenge to rebuild, closer. That event was held on a hot redefine and respirit Detroit from the midsummer day, in a hot crowded Rich Feldman directed the seating ground up. room, teeming with wonderful food, arrangement, putting Mike and I I never suspected that the day love, and too-warm bodies of all age, directly across from Grace, on the was coming when people the world shape, and color. Invincible rapped short side of the long table. Grace over would view the American way her way to my and everybody else’s opened the meeting with a master- of life as mainly responsible for the heart. Danny Glover brought a bit of ful performance—how meetings has global warming that threatens all liv- Hollywood glam to the afternoon. It this woman sat through in her de- ing things on Planet Earth. was a birthday party in Detroit, in the cades of life and work, my god? “We Or that a new generation of Midwest Radical Culture Corridor. are in a special moment. America is young Americans, coming out of in decline.” From there, the spirit in obscurity and with a decent respect Seven months later, a cold and snowy the room took off, and I didn’t know for the opinions of mankind, would winter’s afternoon. The often empty where it would land. assume leadership for encouraging streets of Detroit, forlorn but beau- all Americans to live more simply so tiful, sleeping through a winter just Our introductions were brief. We had that there will be a future for all of us like the one’s I remember from my Grace as the elder, and Andrew as the and our posterity. childhood in the Seventies. We drove younger, and many points occupy- MRCC maps help these millen- into the East Detroit neighborhood ing the seventy years in between the nials decide where to settle and begin of the Boggs Center, coming in on two. Shea Howell came out as doer, rebuilding and revitalizing this coun- Mack Street from downtown. We a thinker and seer whose brain works try from the ground up. passed out of the shrunken neoliberal through action. Rich Feldman drew 116 First Encounter at the Boggs Center JRS Issue 9 117 lines in the sand, gently but firmly, the notion both concretely material XVI self-conscious effort that I have been and each time Mike and I ended up as a lived thing but also more pro- able to understand this and begin to on his side of the line, together with foundly spiritual. Grace remained Half of a quick get over it. For me, the most impor- him recognizing the old models of both analyst and organizer through- tant preparation for this meeting has thinking for which we no longer have out, oscillating between theoretical report-back from been taking place over the course of need (if we ever did). “Recovery”— observations and elegantly motiva- many years, in that sense. Trepida- what’s that?? And why on earth tional speech. “We are the leaders the January 7 tion, it turns out, would have been of would we want it? we have been waiting for” is the very little use during this encounter. mantra—don’t wait around for ap- Boggs Center It was a peaceful, loving room, and provals from the USSF organizers or I am grateful for Dan’s incredible the falling snows muffled the ambi- anybody else is the application. meeting descriptive abilities, and his skill to ent noise to a hushed level. But the organize not just his own thoughts echoes ringing inside my head were The resonant thoughts, analyses, and Jotted down on the morning of and effectively communicate them deafening. A Job Is Not The An- visions went on and on. Larry’s con- January 11, 2010 on his feet, but also the ideas of other swer—that’s what Jimmy Boggs was tributions to the conversations were (still the Earth Ox) by Mike Wolf folks. I learn a lot by being around saying at least as early as 1981. Where few but intense, with a restrained him. And in this case we were at the had I heard that before? In the pages anger underneath, and I loved them. There were eight of us at the table. Boggs Center representing a working of the Fifth Estate. They probably Barb was a presence of quiet determi- group of activists and artists (cultural learned that from Jimmy and Grace. nation, informed by her working as But before that: the snow was starting workers all) who have been gathering No stretch to imagine so, since Rich an outsider in Southeast Asian com- to fall on what I imagine was a typi- their feelings into a language about delivered to us a greeting from Pe- munities. By the time we’d gotten to cal, not unpleasantly gray winter day a very reality-based dream (dream- ter Werbe upon our arrival. Grace, sharing our visions for the summer, I in Detroit as Dan pulled the car up based reality?) called the Midwest one minute relating her (still-fresh!) felt that this was indeed a special mo- to the curb, me scrutinizing the house Radical Culture Corridor (MRCC). frustrations when in attendance at ment. Not speaking about historical numbers. We should have known im- After we all briefly introduced our- the Second World Congress of the moments and big blocks of time only, mediately that it was the house with selves, a custom I appreciate, Dan Fourth International in Paris in 1948, but right there, in that room, two the bright orange windows around was invited to talk about where we then in the next moment bring affects groups of human beings found each the front door, but we weren’t sure were coming from, basically to intro- and biopolitics into the conversation, other, and what’s more, found that until Rich Feldman came to the duce the idea of the MRCC. They, at and casually mentioning that she’d we are on the same road. The Road door, hailing us inside. Suffice it to least Grace and Rich, if not others, just finished Commonwealth by to Detroit, the Road to Our Shared say there was not merely a physical had read a book that our working Hardt and Negri, and oh, by the way, Future. In the Midwest Radical sensation of warmth effusing imme- group made, Call to Farms: Conti- that we should really read it!!! When Culture Corridor. diately as we were invited to our seats nental Drift Through the Midwest Shea said that she thinks a session or at the table, there in the main meeting Radical Culture Corridor. They USSF event organized around place- We parted in a slightly tired but joy- room of the Boggs Center. seemed to like this book. After Dan based politics, she spoke about the ful mood. And only temporarily. To handily described some of the what notions of bioregionalism from the be continued. Forever. Now I like to think that I know myself we think the MRCC is, he actively Seventies, half countercultural, half a little bit. I know that reverence and made room for me to describe some environmental ethics, being mostly trepidation often go hand in hand of the specific projects and undertak- abstract a generation ago. She said for me. That is, I can often feel quite ings of the working group. Whether she perceived those ideas now emerg- worried and insecure around people he knows it or not, I am grateful for ing as a reality. Yes, I concur. We now I admire, like Grace Lee Boggs, Rich his prompting and prodding in this have an existential element informing Feldman, or really any of the others encounter. I am not always eager to our ideas of bioregionalism, making in the room. It has only been through speak up, but it tends to be gratifying 118 Half of a quick report-back…Boggs Center meeting JRS Issue 9 119 and productive when people open the something good for the occasion. XVII to attain the necessary confidence to door for me with a quick invitation. But I think their was a general feel- eventually call these planters boats. Grace spoke of the moment, this his- ing in the meeting that more impor- Varieties of Craft, The collective has built boats out of torical moment, this living moment, tant than the USSF was that we had cast off construction materials with from half a centuries experience liv- all begun to establish personal rela- Smoothness, the goal of taking them out (“swim- ing doing activism in Detroit, and an tionships and that there truly was a ming it”) on a toxic urban canal or even deeper, older base of experience sense of affection that could very well Alchemical creek. The dream of spending the af- than that, as an activist seeing move- develop into a set of meaningful long ternoon away from the city while still ments come and go. She feels this is a term relationships. Pedagogy finding ourselves very much within it special moment, she said this is a time is by no means ours alone, and ama- unlike any other she has seen with re- Dan and I both brought piles of pub- Dylan Gauthier teur boatbuilding itself is at the fore spect building a world that is not that lications, gifts to share, both our own as of late. of imperial capitalism. Rich made work and the work of other groups “The hope of pleasure in the work Through the repetitive applica- sure the we understood they had little from different parts of the Midwest. itself: how strange that hope must tion of somewhat slapdash construc- of not no interest in the same old left- They were already reading these ma- seem to some of my readers—to most tion methods, we have developed ist strategies or languages, basically terials and responding to them before of them!”—William Morris something of a craft: the craft of saying that they are just as bankrupt we left. We were also happily saddled improvised watercraft construction. as that of capitalism. They were in- with wonderful array of books, pam- Disposable Craft Our dories peel themselves out of 5 terested in creativity. They all seemed phlets, and broadsides, and of course At some point over the past two sheets of plywood and stitch and glue agree that artists were vital to the rev- we gathered a few extras to share years I had more or less become themselves together in less than 8 olution they are talking about. Imag- with our friends. a boatbuilder. Not exactly a ship- hours. Through this process, I have inations must be set in motion and wright. But a maker of buoyant craft had many occasions to reflect on the languages have to bubble over with I am looking forward to spending intended for use on the water none- nature of craft, the construction of life. Artists can be powerful catalysts more time with these people and theless. Since about 2005 I have been the handmade, and the idea of what in these processes. Of course Dan and learning about their Detroit. involved collaborative projects that we might call useful or useless labor. I came with our own baggage, our have taught skills and concepts as- Pleasure in the work itself is an mistrust for our own field, the field sociated with improvised endeavors idealized cliche, and mostly rings of art. Dan had some choice words on urban waterways. Most recently, false. We may glorify handwork as a about that. But luckily we’ve been I have taught amateur boatbuilding society—at least in the abstract—but around long enough to know that not and water navigation—skills that at the large part of our society is occu- everybody carries the same baggage first glance may appear completely pied in the consumption of objects and in the end we still remember why without value in an urban setting, created by other people rather than we liked art in the first place. but attain value through the experi- in the creation of our own. It is a pu- ence of their application. Blending ritan value reduced to market neces- We all conversed specifically about attributes of social practice, land art, sities: handwork as an aesthetically some of the possibilities and dreams printmaking, street art, DIY con- pleasing spectator sport. But maybe for projects and activities our work- struction techniques and employing we are more interested in hard work ing group might do in Detroit dur- methods of the psychogeographi- than hand work. Any appreciation ing the U.S. Social Forum in June, cal dérive, our collective, Mare we do have for craft (craft fairs, craft- 2010. Everyone, but especially Shea Liberum, has taught workshops on ing circles) doesn’t always translate Howell, seemed to have good ideas building what are essentially planter to the finished products of this work. for what might work. It shouldn’t boxes, stressing the subtleties of lan- Through modern manufacturing be too much of a problem to make guage which allow the novice builder processes the items we consume are 120 Varieties of Craft, Smoothness, Alchemical Pedagogy JRS Issue 9 121 made smooth and perfect and identi- traditionally) grow in the dirt. She 20th and early 21st century art per- There is a “discrepancy between cally so. If they are not, we take them seemed appalled, embarrassed for spective has been dominated by a the tremendous means of produc- back to the store they came from, or me. In many circles, the handmade rejection of the handmade for the tion and their inadequate utilization we just throw them out. The hand- object is today met with the same in- factory-made art object. Art critic in the process of production.” You made has always evaded this grim nate disdain for its casual imperfect- Jed Perl, writing for American Craft could say, in other words, that at the world of factory perfection and em- ness as the farm-grown tomato is for magazine, details a crisis for what he time of Benjamin’s writing, society braces a more down-to-earth quality, its close relationship with dirt. calls the artisanal urge in contempo- was already failing by a lack of craft. something human and perhaps actu- But what do we expect when rary art production: the handmade Lewis Mumford, writing in the ally likable in its human imperfect- perfect food seems to just appear in has never been “as thoroughly mar- 1950‘s but still resonant, says much ness. And in a culture that values the the supermarket, often in cans, boxes, ginalized as it is right now.” Perl the same as Perl: “Most of the great perfectly factory produced device, or plastic bags; just as perfect manu- traces the evolution of the crisis to artists of the last two centuries...have imperfect has come to mean useless. factured goods come in plastic packs the early conceptual impulse, with been in revolt against the machine and This leads me to question how or gloss-coated cardboard boxes or Duchamp’s sloughing off of the have proclaimed the autonomy of the the concept of usefulness is experi- better yet, in the mail. By my own artist-made work and re-appropriat- human spirit.” But, writes Mumford, enced or recognized in contemporary experience, the boats we have built ing the factory made urinal or bike “by the end of the 19th Century, this society? A sense of usefulness can be are always greeted at first with a wheel as the new ideal. He writes: evocative protest began to die away.” created by teaching someone else to show of distrust if not outright dis- “Duchamp sometimes liked to gently He attributes this change to a “mood build what are at first encounter use- dain. This is true even when they are mock artists who took pleasure in the of submission,” a “self-abnegation,” less objects? The Marxian concept of unmistakably boat-like. We are con- making of things, saying that many resulting in a state wherein, “people “use value” explains a relationship stantly asked by people on the street: people ‘paint because they love the began to worship the machine and between the innate qualities of an ob- “What is it?” Invariably followed by: smell of turpentine,’ but that he had its masters.” Mumford is writing a ject played against the social needs of “Why’d you build that?”—and this is never had the ‘olfactory sensation of decade after man’s new love for ma- a group. But art production involves asked with an almost nagging tone in most artists.’” chines almost destroyed the world. unknown quantities, and social needs their voice, as if they were personally Predating the full throttle The smooth bombs—smooth be- are often ignored, undervalued, mis- offended by the size and roughness of Fordism of the 1950‘s, the epilogue cause of their shape and the regular- represented. It is this axiomatic equa- our dory against the smooth urban to Walter Benjamin’s The Work ity of their production and also for tion that besets arts education in landscape. Barthes wrote of the qual- of Art in the Age of Mechanical their ability to flatten a townscape, relation to craft, with an impact on ities of the factory made object, of Reproduction, offered a simi- to literally smooth the Earth over— broader social structures. its smoothness; “always an attribute lar warning. Perhaps the darkest were contingent on a Fordist work- of perfection because its opposite thread of an already menacing essay, place. Fordism integrated man and Smoothness in the reveals a typically human operation Benjamin tears down Italian Futurist machine to the point that they were Marketplace of assembling.” Somehow, we have Marinetti’s will to aestheticize the nearly interchangeable substances, at I was visiting a farm in upstate New come to associate human qualities machine even to embrace the beauty least on the factory floor. York last summer with a group of again with these smooth products. of machine-driven warfare (“War is Workers on the Fordist assem- children from a Brooklyn school. The iPod, the epitome of smooth, beautiful because it creates new ar- bly lines—today all-but completely Taking a tour of the field, I reached seems sometimes human-like in its chitecture, like that of the big tanks, relocated to the world’s manufactur- down and plucked a ripe cherry to- ability to discern my taste in a par- the geometrical formation flights, ing (“developing”) countries—were mato from a vine and ate it. One of ticular moment’s called-for music. the smoke spirals from burning vil- not hired as craftspeople but as in- the girls screamed: “Gross!” When The recent Microsoft advertisement lages, and many others . . .,” etc.) A terchangeable parts of machine. The asked, she wasn’t sure why. It was in which humans claim to be “PC’s,” mistake has been made. The speed craftsperson focuses on the finest a gut reaction. It was dirty, what- reverses the process, bringing our hu- that Marinetti and Ford rave about details of the product she is build- ever it was. I explained as best as I manity closer to the smooth. has failed us, we have built too much ing, while giving equal attention to could how all vegetables (at least To a great extent, the mid-to-late too fast, without regard for its effect. the totality of the finished product. 122 Varieties of Craft, Smoothness, Alchemical Pedagogy JRS Issue 9 123

Ford’s workers had no control over artist, told me the other night that final form is with the act of making.” and the illusion continues until you detail nor over the finished product. he was glad to hear that California The consequence of not teaching and your students find yourselves out Control was enacted from above, College of the Arts was “doing bet- craft, is that many in our society are in the water. It is a fantastic make-be- from dislocated managers and de- ter since they dropped the ‘craft’.” not trained to understand the com- lieving that becomes true through the signers. The hands worked separately By doing better I assume he meant plex and often inequitable processes act of its crafting. from the heads. No matter even that they were making the news more, or, I which result from the manufacture many of Ford’s employees were re- don’t know, attracting bigger-named smooth products, up to and includ- Traditional Crafts cent immigrants to this country and administrators? Uncomfortable ing their transportation and the form Boatbuilding is informed by an es- may in fact have been actual craft- with the association of the “arts and in which they finally come to us, sentially oral pedagogical tradition, speople in their home countries. crafts” of preschool days and perhaps pre-washed and packaged in plastic. which transitioned through the age Industrial capital already envisioned unawares of the intentions of William If craft is not taught in art schools, of writing into a practice that relies a homogenous workforce, homo- Morris-era “arts and crafts”, I have where will it be taught? How can we on drawings and drafted plans. If geneously unskilled, comprised of heard this same sentiment from so as a society improve our material learning and the experience of that people whose labor could be bought many artist friends. But alongside it, reality if we won’t even consider the which you have learned are gener- for next to nothing. The dislocation there is the report of a friend who at- materials which form the basis of it. ally inseparable, boatbuilding has of hand from brain and the reduction tended CCAC for pottery, who was Teaching arises as a possibil- especially always been something of the human to a machine part in deeply disturbed that craft (her life’s ity to find answers that you yourself you learned as you experienced it. Fordist systems of production led to practice) was no longer considered do not know, through the posing of Edward Tufte, the master theorist of economic inequality, pointless waste an important enough part of the cur- studied questions. It is also implicitly information design, writes about the and disastrous environmental conse- riculum of her alma mater to warrant a form of blind alchemy. Even a mas- difficulty of transforming the three quences as well. mentioning it in its title. ter of the raw materials must con- or more dimensions of the world to While in writing out of a respect What is lost when craft is re- stantly tinker with elements to find a 2D surface. A well-crafted chart for craft as a pedagogical implement, moved from arts education, as far new formulae. The curriculum or or diagram allows us to read its in- I don’t share Perl’s view that con- as I can tell, is this irreplaceable syllabus only guides the work it does formation clearly and “escape from ceptualism has produced any worse function of craft in necessitating the not replace the process. Each new en- the flatlands” of the printed page. art. I mean in no way to discount or unifying of form with intention. As counter demands a modified recipe. Tufte writes, “Confusion and clutter dismiss conceptual or idea-based art, Richard Sennett writes in his book Additionally, the teacher can never are failures of design, not attributes including “relational aesthetics” or on the subject, it is the instrumental predict what the instruction will be- of information.” Early boat plans “social practice.” But there is some- role of craft to any discipline to form come to the students. Meanwhile, the are the epitome of this well designed thing to be said for learning a craft in a relation “between hand and head.” teacher is lost that unsolvable some- “escape from the flatlands.” They the first place, even if you decide lat- Sennett proposes that the teaching of thing, that Aristotelian transparent are “multivariate surfaces,” which er to cast off the handwork for pure craft, or “how to make things well,” between performer and audience. combine boat dimensions with his- mindwork, whatever that is. It does is a necessary starting point to any Because a lecture or demonstration torical knowledge of the evolution seem logical to me that we should be- theoretical exercise. When consider- is also a performance, it exists in that of boatbuilding technique. To the moan this loss of craft in art as in the ing a complex conceptual or theoreti- space between the teacher, the room uninitiated, however, they are a mess rest of society, at least slightly, and at cal problem, craft provides us a much or workshop, the audience, the text, of webs and grids, of offset fractions, least in it how relates to the teaching needed “anchor in material reality.” the charts, the tools, the props... You contours and divisions. of art itself, and in how arts educa- The idea, I suppose, is that craft can hang a chalk board on one wall and A boat is a book that teaches tion is reflected in broader society. prevent us from neglecting this mate- call the shack built from bits of drift itself. It is defined by the knowledge rial reality, from ignoring the real ef- woods and found street scrap a class- of its parts, as a book is defined by Alchemical fects of our imaginings. Craft teaches room and it is a classroom. You paint the knowledge of its pages. Take Pedagogies consequence. As Perl writes, in craft a name on the back of a planter box Melville’s Moby Dick as only the A friend of mine, a performance we learn “how intimately linked the and start to call another part gunnels most known and discussed example 124 Varieties of Craft, Smoothness, Alchemical Pedagogy JRS Issue 9 125 of this book-as-boat/boat-as-book requirements of the finished form, or vision was to simplify centuries old plan emerged long before the initial phenomenon, but any account of a drown. Once you’ve taken a planter diagrams, add the requisite didactic construction phases but became en- nautical voyage redoubles the boat box out on a river and stood in it, text to make the designs legible—and meshed with it as well. I had also in the book. The chapters interleave rowed in it, and floated in it, you techniques practicable—by the lay- been thinking initially about tides with lessons taken from the actual start to believe that the planter box man. His drawings of once cryptic and flood-lines left on houses in New experience of learning the ship; to actually is a boat. Further along, you boat plans, now elegantly framed by Orleans, and it was easy to project work aboard a ship is to learn each of maybe get swept out into Buttermilk appealing stories about hand craft in what we were doing some kind of its named parts and adjunct tools. I Channeland as you fight the cur- and the high seas would lead to gen- eco-apocalyptic remediation project, woke up the other night with the aer- rent with your oars fashioned from erations of DIY boatbuilders. some kind of Ark or escape hatch. ial view of a ship’s deck in my mind, found police barricade wood you The concept of Do It Yourself A planter box is an Ark as well: the cropped and jutting out over the bor- may lose some part of the illusion comes out of the 1950’s as well, a time seeds planted in rows redouble them- der of the image. In a perfect reloca- of seaworthiness you had previously we may not generally associate with selves after it rains. An Ark also tion of a site of meaning, a construc- been convinced of. But after all there the values of resistance to commodi- represents a giving up of a space. tion of a visual language of minimal are many, many situations in which I fication that marks DIY culture to- Building boats for us had more to do signs, lines describing the parts and would rather have at hand something day. DIY is not always and necessar- with opening up new spaces in a city functions of each place and piece of that resembles a boat than no boat ily craft, it is always a throwback to which is trying to squeeze people out the boat were painted onto the deck. at all. Also, many more people have the idea of craft. While the craftsper- of old ones. Or not painted—rather, lines and died aboard real boats than planter son is a master of a single language, words etched into the decks by the boxes. DIY appropriates as needed the skills Improvisation sun or by the intentions of the people In the 1950’s, at the height of the necessary from a broad variety of lan- New York City was built over an who know their use values. post-war American economy, boat- guages. DIY often still wants to stand archipelago, an archipelago of for- building became another in a long list side-to-side with goods produced in gotten or overlooked islands. A few Trash Craft of potential hobbies for the family the world’s machined factory lines are known by name, but few names Trash-boat building is an art and a man with a free Saturday afternoon, but without the cumbersome econo- are known by many. It was itself a craft. It is the art of selecting mate- amongst amateur radio construc- mies of extortion, labor exploitation city built of manufacturing, oriented rials—from the trash—and the craft tion, car kits, tree-houses, planter and structures of control. It wants around its role as America’s pre- of making trash hold together via im- boxes and train sets. The word hob- the functionality promised by factory mier port—a center of craft—and provised continuum mechanics. You by was originally used to describe a production without the factory. If surrounded by water. Beyond ship- have to consider tension, friction, small horse, and then a fake wooden you look at the teeth of DIY, you en- wrights and sailors, the old harbor buoyancy, greater and lesser forces horse that a child would ride: hence counter hand-made and often hasty speaks of an artisanal economic sys- as you go. It is a skill-set made from the idea of hobby being a horse stand-ins for store-bought goods, tem, one concerned with the gradual rough almost-skills—for example, that won’t get you anywhere. John albeit avoiding store-bought smooth- bringing of raw materials, small bits how to screw rotted quarter-inch Gardner, the father of hobbyist boat- ness by either material limitation or at a time, to small producers within construction-fence plywood into a building was first a college English aesthetic convention. the city. There was an in-built slow- complex curve without shredding Professor, and like William Morris, Craft is finely interwoven with ness, an automatic consideration of the plywood, the frame, the screw, or a life-long socialist. He was fired luxury, as a craftsperson’s time is craft because shipping served the your own hand. Through the teach- from his professorship for expound- costly. But when boats are not built crafts then, the most important of ing of these skills of limited use, all ing socialist ideas in lecture, and was for luxury, they are built of necessity. the 19th Century city being either kinds of greater things start to hap- ostensibly blacklisted. He would A boat should be a way of traveling publishing or garment manufactur- pen. A trash-boat craft forms out dismiss the academy and return to across water surfaces while staying ing. The equivalent quantity of goods of this continual hands-on decision his hobby—boatbuilding—trans- mostly dry. Our collective wanted brought into the harbor in a whole making. Beyond that, you must al- forming the specialized craft into a each boat to be rapidly reproduc- year in the 19th Century are today ways remain intimately aware of the readily-approachable avocation. His ible by anyone. The conceptual carried to Bayonne, NJ’s container 126 Varieties of Craft, Smoothness, Alchemical Pedagogy JRS Issue 9 127 docks by a single freighter. Today developers are given free land and share in the learning process with she nearly whispered the part about there is a harbor in name only, as the tax breaks to build and build these us, through public workshopping, printing money to me, and I wonder stretch of water between Battery Park new old ideas, these new old parks our collaborative printed 2 more now if I’m giving something away... and Staten Island is still referred to as and new old apartment buildings, instructional broadsheets, each one Of course I would expect that this such, though today only tour boats and you think first off that you’ve improved. Following in the path of feeling of issuing one’s own currency dock there. seen them all before, because they Gardner, we wanted plans that even is clearly something experienced by Most days, my own interaction might as well be made in a factory. a hypothetical urban professional— artists and artisans alike—and while with the water is almost nonexistent. In fact, many large developers hire gear of the machine, resident of the further examination of the printing It makes the subway maps prettier, software engineers to write programs new condo tower—could decipher and issuance of money is beyond the and easier to read. It serves as an to design buildings, or simply buy the and apply. scope of what I’m writing, craft does emotional buffer between boroughs; software off the shelf. It saves money An artist friend last summer, who have a central place in improved or a financial buffer to zones of higher in the end, because architecture is also builds floating things, was mak- alternative currency projects surfac- or lower real estate value. Day-to-day still a craft and as we have seen craft ing prints to sell to collectors in order ing currently around the country. it is still there, probably lonely. There is costly. The buildings designed by to fundraise for her latest voyage. It’s Like the original quest for al- are a currently at least 600 proposals such robots are robots in themselves like I’m printing money, she told me. chemical formulae, here is a major in the mayor’s office which attempt with their complex layers of heat- Each of her posters could sell for sev- thought divide: should the artist’s to reintegrate the water and the city, ing, cooling, power, security systems. eral thousand dollars, whereas our alchemy be merely for producing but most of them have to do with wa- These new old buildings are familiar. printed broadsheets would be given gold, or whether it could also be used terfront redevelopment, and all the They look like anywhere. And then away and or wheat pasted up on to to transmute the human soul into city seems to be able to see along its some of them really look like Miami. the sides of buildings. This question an imperishable and perfect spirit? future waterfront is a network of con- And then just like Miami all of the of value is at the center of a broader This alchemical variance is a con- dos connected by semi-public parks. building stops one day, because the question about what constitutes art, tinuation, in some sense, of the work Today the most audacious waterfront developers have run out of money and my friends situation is present of people like John Gardner and condo offers a view of the river only anyway. The incentivizing from the in so much art production—the cre- William Morris as well. Craft can until another, more audacious tower mayor’s office can only do so much ation of something of conventionally lead to a marketable commodity, but blocks it. New waterfront parks are for their flawed practice. And the ply- accepted exchange-value to fund an it can perhaps also lead us to more lined with steel handrails to keep us wood construction fences don’t go activity of more marginal use value. than that. safely away from the water. A further anywhere for a while, nor the piles of For my friend to take images from A few final thoughts on our pro- indicator of the city’s fear of the wa- old palette wood. Everyone is think- her head and through a multi-part cess. Offering the established and un- ter: the waterfront parks close at sun- ing: well what should we do with all process draw, paint, photograph and derstood framework of a workshop set and not 1 a.m. as is the case with of this? And part of why the answer reprint these images, and from this gives support and builds-in confi- the safely landlocked public parks. is not clear is because we’re not sure generate enough currency (a flow) to dence to an otherwise sketchy activ- They are highly militarized zones, how it all got there in the first place, allow herself and 20 companions to ity. There are a slough of free schools whereas city parks tend to be relative really. It doesn’t make much sense. travel through Southern Europe for cropping up all over the country right refuges from law enforcement, the To us, at first I thought maybe a summer is akin to a very rare and now, and I think they work more or waterfront parks all require full-time the future condo owners could take subjective form of alchemy. Because less on the same equation. They park rangers to be on duty during down their own fences and build her formula is dependent on her role are all built on the sharing of skills, open hours. Not so of the landlocked something useful for themselves. in creating it, each time. The results ideas, collaboration. As art gives you parks in the city. To encourage them, these unknown are hinged on the past successes of the artistic license, does schooling give The city strikes a deal with high-rise dwellers, I printed an in- alchemist herself. Must she become a you scholastic license? Perhaps the condo towers: watch over these dan- structional manual and wheat past- public figure or can she survive hid- skills we’re sharing are not so hard gerous zones in your shadows and ed it up all over the neighborhood. den away, a private alchemist after to come by, but isn’t school mostly we’ll make sure you get built. The Through inviting collaborators to Aristotle’s ‘hand-worker’? I realize about learning the confidence to do 128 Varieties of Craft, Smoothness, Alchemical Pedagogy JRS Issue 9 129 what you already know? From our XVIII project on me as a teacher in gradu- side, inviting the public in to help ate school. The first day of class this figure out our process opens our fi- Late night semester I totally felt the presence of nal aims up to public scrutiny. It is Surplus Seminar and, most especially, the act of teaching craft; teaching, talkback A/AA. With that said I wasn’t mani- that most propitious form of learn- festing content, or things that we did ing. You self-teach to assemble your assessing A/AA on the project. I had internalized the knowledge, then submit it to a will- rhetoric, the concept, all of the things ing public. Every teacher is familiar and educational we were trying to externalize, and with the experience of standing in trying to manifest through the expe- front of a class and realizing that at staging as a riential process of building A/AA, some point a part of the explanation and through all of the writing that was overlooked. A new pathway to Politics over we had done and all of the media that explaining an old idea must be dis- was created to extend the idea out covered. The obvious solution in homemade Ginger there as a concept. When I went back this case is to open the question up to teach after A/AA, in what would to the students, and for a minute the Tea, Vancouver, be thought of as a more formalized workshop is transformed into a site academic situation, a lot of the con- of real learning: the teacher and stu- B.C. Canada siderations of that space that we tried dent bound together as they use their to manifest on the ground were sud- hands and their heads to find an ac- A Conversation between Gabriel denly present for me. I found myself ceptable answer to the problem. Mindel Saloman and Sam Gould being really mindful when I was talk- ing to my students, which is some- GMS: What did we learn at school? thing that I always try to do, but in I’d be interested in possibly staging this state it was palpable. I realized the conversation along those lines. where this feeling was coming from, One of the best things about Any- and aware of how I could harness it where/Anyplace Academy (A/AA) as a tool. It was an amazing effect to is that, even though we had a role as realize that, after all the work we’d the kind of charismatic facilitators in done on the project, that I could go propelling it forward with access to into another situation, another con- materials and whatnot—resources— text, and everything that we’d done I think we did pretty good at dissolv- and discussed could continue to ing the boundary between who was some degree, that it could transfer so teaching and who was learning. I easily. I told the students, at the start think that we taught people as much of the class, that what was important as we were learning. for me were these ideas of horizontal- ity and flatness, and a permeability SG: Which was rhetorically very to the classroom, and that the con- much a part of what we were af- versation that we are having in the ter. I think what is interesting, as an classroom needs to be a public con- aside—or maybe it’s not—is that versation, and that what we’re talk- already I can feel the effect of that ing about within the classroom needs 130 A Conversation on A/AA JRS Issue 9 131 get out of what we might consider authority in something that is seem- the conversation is far more egalitar- that are tangible to someone just sit- an insular space, and that we’ll learn ingly unimpeachable. ian, it assumes I believe exactly as ting under a tree watching apples fall. through that permeability. Also, that others do. I aware I can be included if Robby uses the term post-politics. I I will not be talking “to you,” and SG: Or, I think, maybe to augment I want to be—but the participants as- think we’re almost post-epistemolo- that they shouldn’t expect me to tell that notion is that it solely promotes sume that I am like them, assume that gy in our society. It’s this stance of, them things, we’ll arrive there to- a shared expertise, and that we’re all I share the exact same politics. To my “there’s nothing left to know.” The gether. That’s the long and short of it. reading from the same book. And, understanding, it’s that they assume I operating strategy is that, whatever What I wanted to make clear to them in this sense, it’s not that we all have adhere to the same dogma. It’s really you want to know there’s a specialist was that, by my definition that is my wisdom and knowledge, but that the hard for me to separate that from any out there who’s pretty much got all job. And in saying it I realized it was goal is to have the same wisdom and sort of zealotry that the conversation the answers in his library somewhere. completely non-rhetorical for me. I the same knowledge. A dogma in is fighting against, that the conversa- wasn’t faking it for effect. And I was which we all agree what everything tion is binarally opposed to. I under- SG: But the point is, is that there’s saying all of this… means and how it works and we do stand that the conversation is coming nothing left to know because that’s not waiver from that agreement. And from, what I consider, a good place what we’ve told ourselves. GMS: More as a request than a I find that really insidious. (for the most part), but it is so con- statement… trolled by these binary systems. It’s GMS: That’s what I’m saying, yeah. GMS: Well, it’s dangerous too, right? totally black and white, no matter That’s the imposed condition, that’s SG: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I felt re- It seems to me to be the quintessen- how much it pretends to be nuanced. the imposed concept for our capacity ally good about that. And it seemed tial American political problem right Certainly there are nuances within for learning, that it is finite, or at the to be received very well. now, in that we’re all striving to have grey areas. I know that’s true. But very least, quantitative. the right answer, and we’re complete- the shades are so seemingly mono- GMS: Honestly there were a lot of ly unwilling to accept the possibility chromatic. So I see the same thing in SG: It’s because we’ve stressed a cul- things I got out of A/AA. I think of multiple points of view. the Four Questions, and in a lot of ture of specialization, and a culture there were a lot of things trying to be ways that we encounter educational of the expert. Conversely I’d feel just discussed simultaneously during the SG: Or the same answer for that mat- structures, or collective questioning, as uncomfortable in a culture of the process. So it’s hard to even choose ter, not even the right one. I think in that it is extremely dogmatic, and amateur. GMS: Where everything where to begin. One thing that I really that problem exists regardless of po- rigid. is equal and there’s no appreciation loved about it was that it challenged litical ideology. I don’t know if you of people’s investment of time and basic societal assumptions about, not overheard my comments to Robby GMS: It seems as if it is always energy and resources and a certain just authority, but expertise and how after we left Dim Sum this morning leading to one inevitability, right? knowledge based. those two things relate to each other, in regard to our conversation at the In that education has one ultimate about what could be contributed by table about the Olympics, and what goal, which is the accumulation of SG: Yeah, exactly. It creates a cul- someone who “just doesn’t know.” an activist/artist response should be, knowledge and dissemination of said ture that breaks everything down to, It’s kind of like what Robby (Herbst) whatever you want to call it. That knowledge, but there’s seemingly a “yeah, hey man. That’s cool.” And was saying about The Ignorant Son in conversation that we had is a conver- specific reservoir of that knowledge. my reaction is, “come on, it’s more the Four Question of The Haggadah, sation that I’ve had, that you’ve had, This line of thinking assumes that than cool. I wanna talk about more where he was really annoyed that the in dozens of cities, in dozens of con- we’re all done in regard to attempt- than that.” But I’m wondering what ignorant son, who doesn’t know any- texts, and I get really uncomfortable ing to accumulate that knowledge. It that is? What does a non-linear edu- thing, was treated so poorly, in that it when this conversation inevitably be- doesn’t leave any room for mystery. If cation look like? reinforces this notion that we’re only gins. I get uncomfortable for the same anything those mystery’s are so spe- justified in our contribution, and that reasons that I’m also uncomfortable cific now. They are the absolute mi- GMS: I feel like A/AA was a success, we’re only even allowed to contrib- about the Four Questions, because it crocosm or the absolute macrocosm from my own personal experience. I ute, if we have a sense of expertise or assumes something of me. Thought mystery’s, but they’re not mystery’s experienced it directly as a success, 132 A Conversation on A/AA JRS Issue 9 133 and that’s enough. I think it’s been An another side of it, another mea- a consciousness, that… effort. And they were in part inspired reinforced not just by the people who sure of success as I see it, is that there by seeing our project to make their have participated in the project, but are initiatives from Vancouver that SG: That we don’t control, or… project. And in this sense it wasn’t also by my experience of my com- have initiated their own projects that our project caused their project, munity of people, here in Vancouver, which were in part inspired, if not GMS: Or can be the authority of, but it was… that energy. We should street B.C. who witness it through very me- initially then through the course of be a participant within. clear of any ego-trip here. That’s not diated means… their own working on it, by A/AA… what I’m trying to get at, obviously. SG: And that continues the method- SG: Which was the point. The blog, SG: Which was occurring in the mo- ology of the project (Surplus Semi- SG: Yeah, I definitely want to steer and other mediated aspects, where ment of our working on A/AA, not nar, and to some extent, A/AA). The away from that idea of influence. there to be encountered. You didn’t years down the road, by while it was reason to get involved as facilitators have to be there to grasp an area of happening, which is something I find is the same reason to get involved as GMS: Yeah, because then that gives experience of the project. really interesting, and appealing. It participants. precedence to us. was part of a micro-cosmic consid- GMS: I shared it earlier, but I want eration, in a way, it caught up with GMS: It also shows to the extent that SG: Yeah. Which is not the case. In to repeat it—the comment from a cycle that was important at that it is flexible, that it can serve multiple this way I see it more as a kind of Graham Sheard, the coordinator at time and which, as was our goal, il- purposes. What happened in Pitts- energy transference, in that we are Spartacus Books in Vancouver, B.C. luminated that consideration. That burgh during the G20, and at Carn- picking up on things that energize His comment of, “I watched your was the goal, to magnify what we egie Mellon, was that it was done un- us, which in turn energize others. It’s blog. I had it on my RSS feed, and were doing, and magnify others ac- der a situation of crisis and response, hard, I feel like better metaphors are it was wonderful… it was people… tions, and for the project to serve as but also done in a way that sought to always needed, no matter what you doing things… together.” And he was a vehicle to mediate all those con- propose a similar type of experience are working on. so overjoyed. This is someone who’s siderations; or own, and others. You (to our project) but in a very different spent a lot of time collective orga- have the people in Pittsburgh during context. GMS: I feel like looking back at A/ nizing, is involved in a very loosely the G20, who created a shantytown, AA, the hardest part, emotionally, structured collective in the case of at the same moment of what we were The Village Project, which occurred was leaving it—building this thing Spartacus Books, and he was genu- up to. I found that really interesting, in Vancouver, B.C. and framed itself that really felt wonderful, and then inely happy to witness it, because that synchronicity. as a winter-time holiday market—but leaving the community that helped what he saw was something so sim- was literally a village build inside of a construct it. I don’t regret what we ple, but what is really the desire of GMS: What I find so interesting, is Ukrainian Hall which was construct- did, as those were the conditions from any community organizer—whether that they were doing it as a direct ac- ed out of dumpstered materials, scav- the get go, it was an agreed upon con- their practice is an art practice or tion response, where as we were do- enged materials—was made, mostly, dition for everyone. But I felt really an activist practice, a social welfare ing something similar as a…mmm… by amateurs. It was a multi-avenued, sad to leave it. And it made me regret practice—it’s to see people collabo- self-contained space. It went up in that I hadn’t done that process here rating in a way that feels like actual SG: I would say, indirect action one day, and remained up for two in Vancouver, wherein I could con- togetherness, and that felt proactive. response. days and two nights. In the evening tinue it with street participation and I think what is appealing is that it was there would be theatre and musi- through stewardship. But then also able to be propagated in something GMS: Yeah. Absolutely. Right. And cal performances. Afterward it was the other disappointment was stew- as mediated as a blog—granted in a it was interesting to see how this ba- deconstructed in one day. So it was ardship in Columbus, in that maybe way it’s our propaganda—he’s smart sic concept, one, is reflected in a mul- totally ephemeral, even though it was our presence, even if we managed to enough to see through that and he tiplicity around this country, around a really substantial thing. It took the negotiate a relationship that was not still saw it. North America. It seemed to be rid- effort of a lot of people. Both physi- super-hierarchical, was needed to ing a wave of awareness. Or desire, or cal, emotional, spiritual, energetic continue and that our disappearance 134 A Conversation on A/AA JRS Issue 9 135 lead to a space that couldn’t be filled interest but because of the demands experience with a good friend, some- as learning site, construction site as even by the people who invested so of physicality and upkeep, all that one I really admired, continue to ad- an experiential class into the creation much time, and energy, and even au- stuff. But everything that manifested mire, wherein these conflicts would of the very site that it is. That’s really thorship to A/AA. educationally, pedagogically, through come up, complications, things that compelling to me. Especially in that I A/AA they have a desire to continue. would come up which are inherent felt it worked. SG: But I think that’s an important to And I think that’s totally legitimate, in working with other people, or in realize within non-hierarchical edu- and a great way to consider the proj- the nature of the work that we were GMS: Yeah. There’s something really cational structures. In that it doesn’t ect after the physical manifestation of doing. This friend would come up important to me in regard to Dylan take someone to lead it, but it does it leaves. For me that’s as much it as to me and ask, “well, what should Gauthier’s relationship to the project take a source of energy and that is anything else. What about you? we do?” And my response was al- when he came and we all built the different from being able to facilitate ways, “let’s ask the collective.” And boat, in that I don’t think we could the space. You do need someone who GMS: I have to say it broke my heart always, he’d say, “of course!” In that have all done that at the beginning. will be there to continuously harness to leave the structure, the thing. But we don’t have to solve this problem If he had come at the beginning it that energy, be there charge that space when it comes down to it, Columbus on our own, it’s a collective problem would have felt like a much more and charge the people around it. I did doesn’t need another physical space that we’ve all agreed to decide upon complicated problem. And it wasn’t find it disappointing in that the en- for activity, it needs a different kind together to find a collective solution. just about skills… ergy I’m talking about dissipated, but of activity to create within existing We’ll all have individual contribu- I also accepted it. I understand that. spaces. I’d say that about the earth, tions of what the solutions might be, SG: Of course, it was about the will- It’s not to say that the goals weren’t in general, at this moment. Really but if we have made a commitment ingness to jump into it. That will to met with A/AA, that version of A/ that structure, as liberating as it felt to actual collective activity then that believe was very important. AA. And this is because it was just an to be in it, with as much potential as means that we have to actually trust energy dispersion. And we’ve already I saw in it, in the end it wasn’t that each other to not resolve it complete- GMS: Yes, the belief that they could, got signs back from talking to the Columbus needed an empty space to ly before we can figure it through we could, actually built a boat that builders, in correspondence, that as- activate, it needed a kind of activity; collectively. And that is one of the could float. So it got to the point that pects of the educational environment a space that is more about communal things that enjoyed with A/AA, that we all said that, yeah sure, I can turn of A/AA have radiated outward and education, communal wealth, com- sense that the platform was an open an old staircase… that the environment that has been munal activity, and play and build- question that was not resolved at the left—even in the physical absence of ing. In that sense if people witness it beginning… SG: That was so heavy that five of A/AA—is different. Which is exactly (A/AA) firsthand, and are impressed us could barely move twenty feet in what we were hoping for. That seems with this idea of, well, communism, SG: And was not resolved at the end a parking lot, but we were willing to generative to me. I like that the build- really—not historical communism, and is not resolved now. And it con- turn it into a boat that we’d row in ers are trying to consider non-struc- but to commune—if that’s what they tinues, and it’s why I like the project. one of the most polluted waterways tural means of continuing the ideas get than that’s wonderful. That’s It’s explicate within all the rhetoric in Ohio! brought about during A/AA. For what I can hope for. And that’s what we put out there, in that it does not example, James Manning and Todd I took away, another validation that exist as a thing it exists as an idea. It GMS: That was magical! Pleasents plans of creating a demate- this is the way that I want to inter- happens here it happens there it hap- rialized version of A/AA that can ex- act with people. I don’t want power pens as a class, even though driving SG: Yeah. It wasn’t that it was stu- ist though the ethos and interests of over other people and I don’t want by it looks like a construction site, pidity to do that. It was a considered those that helped construct it in the to be subjected to power, but I want but it’s a class. And then, in turn, you response to a problem, a considered first place, and in their desire to cre- to experience gift giving, sharing, can see how you can turn any site response that was entered into by a ate this dematerialized A/AA they’re being surprised, being opened to be- you want into a schoolhouse by your group, and in so, we had a shared discussing how the version we cre- ing surprised, and being listened to. own space of consideration. And belief that we would do what was ated together didn’t cease because of In a different collective I had this hence, that idea of construction site needed for the group. 136 A Conversation on A/AA JRS Issue 9 137

GMS: It seems analogous to how show up? GMS: I think about that idea of, general sense, social change—things meaningful social change happens, “how do you spread that equity that have a more uplifting, liberating, in that it is a series of small victories SG: That’s an interesting analogy. I around?”. There have been a number or beautiful social quality to them that lead to greater possibilities. If think a lot of people had that feeling. of significant moments, of a similar require participation—can only be you say, “we’re going to get the eight- For me that was kind of a turning dynamic, that have happened that accomplished in a liberating way by hour workday,” and the response is point, in that I showed up and was I didn’t take part in, for instance, yourself, by your own participation. that, “I can’t even sneeze without get- shocked to find out how many people Seattle in 1999. I knew I should be You can’t coerce people into doing it. ting yelled at by the boss,” then it’s a were downtown. More people than I there, but I was poor and broke liv- big leap. But if you start with a little have ever seen in downtown Portland ing in Oakland, California so I used SG: I agree, but getting back to the victory then these seeming impossi- in the whole decade I’ve lived there. that as a justification for not going. idea of how the tenants and peda- bilities start to seem possible. It takes And then, later in the day, getting So, more recently, while we were in gogy that we hoped to convey with a lot to take those leaps of faith—to calls from friends in Chicago saying, Columbus the G20 was happening A/AA, and how they were actually get in the boat—but it helps when you “We shut down Lake Shore Drive to- in Pittsburgh, and again, I didn’t go. spread—through media and conjec- have had these experiences wherein day.” This was the case all over the This time because of responsibili- ture, which was a deliberate choice you’ve gotten in the boat before and world on the same day. It’s not that ties I felt towards our time and our on our part—through the efficacy of it floats. Knowing where we started everyone knew. I had no idea what activities in Ohio. Similarly though, those strategies I think it conveys that it was a remarkable thing for me to was going to happen beforehand, in relation to Seattle, I didn’t go for there are multiple forms of participa- see, to see that we all felt, “yeah, we’ll but I went anyway, because that is one reasons or another, and in the tion, and tools to facilitate interest. do it. We’ll actually build a boat that where I felt I had to be. And I think case of Pittsburgh it resulted in one With that said, with Seattle in 1999 floats.” And we did it. that’s what drove everyone to show of the biggest Black Block convergen- and Pittsburgh in 2009, were you not up that day. Which is a very different ces in North American history. And participating? Does participation SG: That gets back to that idea of eq- feeling from other protests, where I what I think that calls to is a feeling require a physical embodiment on uity too. A belief that if I’m going to don’t feel the same sense of efficacy of people thinking the opposite, “I’m site? I think gets back to the phrase get out to the parking lot each day, or equity, that feeling of, “If I’m there going to show up even if no one else we brought up earlier, indirect action. if I’m going to take out the circular other people will be there.” I think does, because it’s what I’m called to Were you not spreading that equity, saw, if I’m going to cut up twenty maybe the thing to talk about then do, what I should do. Even if I think but spreading it in a way that you felt palettes, sand them down, and make is how is that belief in equity trans- it could be disastrous, I have to be was most equitable for your environ- them into flooring, I felt like my do- ferred? Is it an unconscious thing? Is there.” The reason I call up these two ment at the time? The efficacy you ing than manifested into other people it conjecture? There have been plenty instances and my non-participation felt you could convey was elsewhere, doing that. I created this feeling that of other instances wherein I knew within them is because that spreading but the solidarity was internalized. if I am going to do it then other peo- about convergences of the same kind. of equity we experienced comes from There is, then, this actually palpable ple are. If I am going to be able to Maybe what it is, in the end, is the af- our accepting our own participation indirect action. bring myself out there then anybody finities that we share with our peer- within it. We showed up, not because can bring themselves to be out there. group? It’s not that I knew everyone we were told to, but because we felt GMS: Right. I think that’s a really who was going to be at that protest compelled to for intangible reasons. critical thing to pull for. The con- GMS: Honestly that’s how I felt go- that day. What I was aware of was In regard to A/AA I included myself sideration then is, “where actions ing to a lot of demonstrations. There the palpable energy of the event, and in that experience. I think that we radiate out, to what extent are they was a protest in the lead up to the how much it was weighing on every- spread it—as facilitators—by actual- measurable, if not from the person Iraq War when I was in Portland. I one. Even those you wouldn’t expect ly participating. It’s like what Robby creating the action, then the person had feeling while walking over, won- it to. And therefore I felt compelled (Herbst) said in his YouTube School receiving the action?” It’s an aware- dering what if I’m the only person to be there. I was drawn there by a for Social Politics (YTSSP) essay, ness that something that happened there? What if I am the only person particular energy. Not because I was that protest doesn’t need watch- elsewhere, but radiated within me, al- who shows up? What if ten people told to be there. ers it needs participants. In a more lows me to have more trust that what 138 A Conversation on A/AA JRS Issue 9 139

I take part in will resonate elsewhere. that monochromatic scale. There is people who have the exact same skin and I would guess weed, if not acid. Thus, again, I have the courage to get this kind of linearity there, a binary color, or even politics for that mat- Which speaks to the fact that there on the boat because I believe because idea of history, thought, and action. ter, but it represents a fracture, an were a lot of conservative elements in of the experiences I’ve had. If I can But what really is what is happening iteration of something that is the the hippie scene that were not always get on the boat other people can get is this kind of pulsing of those histo- same thing. It’s kind of like a mush- talked about, right? on the boat. If I can build a boat of ries, those actions. There are these room, like the Humongous Fungus course other people have built and moments of synchronicity on that in Oregon. It covers the forest floor SG: Absolutely. Which definitely will build boats. You then begin to monochromatic scale, and what then and pops up in just a few places, but comes up in the treatment of women come across this energy of belief all we find occurring is this energy spike, it’s massive, and it’s all the same or- and the real split between hippiedom the time. You begin to find instances and what goes up is this rainbow of ganism, right? Maybe there is a Sam and the feminist movement in the that reaffirm your faith, your com- activity, that is shockingly visible, and Gabriel on a survivalist farm 1970’s because there was real inter- mitment. You see it everywhere in and then, again, it dissipates. Wow. I commune teaching kids how to build nalize chauvinistic and conservative people doing what you are also do- just got woo-er than you. through a similar project. It’s a dif- thinking in hippiedom. ing, and it bolsters your actions. ferent ideology, but it’s part of the GMS: That makes sense to me same organism. GMS: That racism was endemic in SG: And it’s a belief, as much, not though. It also reminds me of Bizarro the hippie community in the Haight that other people will do it after World Superman, in that it suggests SG: It’s like when we were down in in San Francisco. Not an overt rac- you, but that other people equally as that there is this other dimension. San Jose, California when we were ism, but an internalize one. It’s in- much, have done it before you. And in this other dimension we’re doing Revolutionary Spirit and how, teresting to then go and see this guy, doing the same project but it is part in our research we came on Joss. In Joss, who then goes to build this GMS: Doing it later, doing it before, of a militia’s home schooling initia- that regard a platform wherein so commune in the hills above Los Ga- doing it twenty years ago, fifty years tive. A great example of a somewhat many of the same tenants and prac- tos to help teach better body health, ago. That’s the thing. You get a sense similar practice is something that got tices can be applied to something that energetic heath, all of these new age of how history moves backwards and written about in Crimethinc recently. adheres to a totally different type of concepts, but in the context of a white forwards and how history resonates I think it was in Sweden. A group of politics, in that case a politics that supremacist separatist community. at different times—maybe for a rea- local activist/anarchist folks were at- was incredibly insidious and hate- And when I first came across that all son, maybe for no reason at all—but tempting to open up squats, and cre- ful. Maybe it would be good if you I could think was this cannot be real. for whatever reason at that point ate a legitimate radical cultural center explained who this person was? Is the world this fucking bizarre? But at that time it meant something for for activity, but they were constantly then, yeah, it’s a perfect example of us to do that work. And, in turn, it being affronted by the local authori- GMS: Joss was a Vietnam veteran how so many of these tendencies will meant something for others to do ties. Finally they found a parcel of who comes back to the states think- speak to people on a very inherent similar work elsewhere concurrently. land to rent and acquired a bunch of ing that government is bullshit, level, but we always bring our own These kind of synchronicities are part shipping containers. With very little thinks war is bullshit, but also has context to it and then it colors how of the world, they’re part of the work. knowledge they built a community these white supremacist attitudes and it manifests. Maybe an interesting center with four shipping containers, discovers, upon returning home, that question then is does it matter more SG: Are these the gradations that I a bunch of found wood, and what- if anything the races are getting to- the context that an activity appears in was bringing up earlier? This kind of ever knowledge any one person had gether and mingling. And to him this or the activity itself? And I say that monochromatic, binary idea of pro- that particular day. And they did it. is bad news. But along with this he thinking about the Tea Party move- gressive and conservative that I find It’s this idea that what we are inter- gets turned on! ment. There’s this complication, in so upsetting? Is what we are talking ested in with A/AA is happening in a that I think that a lot of the politics about now the means of articulat- different way all over the place, and SG: To yoga! of that movement, self-defined radi- ing those gradations? I think it is it doesn’t happen in the exact same cal people could really get behind— more these kinds of color spikes on manner, in the exact same way, with GMS: Yeah! To yoga, to meditation, against militarism, against corporate 140 A Conversation on A/AA JRS Issue 9 141 greed, against incursion on individu- person could find a commonality. them, how they’re contextualized, al rights, against this kind of corrup- They could recognize that there were made sense. Like the guy with the tion that has permeated our system. equitable aspects that they could knife who was talking about how to But, in this regard, the Tea Party both harness, that there was some sharpen your knife (who seemed like movement is colored by the context sort of commonality. a total wacko) if he was talking about that attempts to contain it. being lost in the woods that’s a dif- GMS: It’s not to say that there ferent story, it begins to make sense. SG: But that context is incredibly wouldn’t be some point where those right wing, arrogant, militant and differences were so vast, or so dy- GMS: Yeah, all of those types of inconsiderate of people who don’t namic, that in the moment that they videos could be seen as very funda- share their viewpoint, which is a nar- might feel insurmountable, and mental. All they could be saying, let’s row one. might be insurmountable in and of say, is people find themselves lost in the moment. Maybe what that proves the woods sometimes. They need to GMS: But is it such an irreconcilable is that what we need to do is, rather survive, and the sad thing is that they difference that we couldn’t re-shape than change peoples minds, we have have no idea how to do it. People their context in a way that allows us to change peoples contexts. starve while surrounded by food. to be allies? This comes back for me People freeze while surrounded by to—and I feel bad that we have to SG: This brings us back to Robby’s sources of warmth. That’s the irony, single him out as the signature right essay for the YTSSP for me—possi- in that most often it’s not the mes- wing member of our A/AA building bly for him as well—in regard to the sages that are at fault it’s how they’re collective—but James Manning. He theatre of protest, in that all of the received, it’s the context in which had a very different politic viewpoint, videos that he showed, contextually, they appear. I think the same case an incredibly different set of life expe- they could have elicited a very dif- could be made for A/AA. That proj- rience, but at the same time he shared ferent response. Wherein if the guy ect could be a really meaningful and some very fundamental, meaning- with the gas can was some farmer beneficial thing for some people, but ful values with everyone within the in the North Country of Minnesota, the context in which it was presented, construction collective. But then you what do you do to preserve your gas for some people, disables that. had some people who, say, were self- cans and fuel if you want to use them identified anarchists, and then you for your snow mobile so you can get SG: So you’re saying the next project had James who self-identified him- around, because you obviously won’t is Tea Party oriented? self as… be able to use your car, is a great vid- eo to have, right? GMS: Exactly. SG: Pro-war. GMS: It’s imperative! It’s incredibly GMS: Yeah. But then a situation was practical and valuable. able to develop wherein we were all seeing one another eye-to-eye. SG: But, in the context of the coming apocalypse it seems totally absurd. SG: But what we were able to do is GMS: People mistook that video for create a context of equity, wherein outright comedy. Intentional comedy. everybody’s viewpoint was totally valid, wherein the so-called an- SG: Nearly all of those videos, de- archist and the so-called pro-war pending on the way you are viewing Colophon

The Journal of Radical Shimming is, apart from to be free of charge, and that includes this a means of documenting “radical” histories, a issue I am presenting to you right now.” Feel tool in print-form in which to instigate discus- free to use this text as a script. Improve and sion on how we encounter and define these his- improvise all that you would like, but whatever tories; accepted, or otherwise. As well, the JRS you do, Don’t pay for it god damn it!! is a forum in which to propose simple tools to instigate possible future histories in the making. Thank you As mentioned, we get to put out the JRS for The JRS covets immediacy, relegating dominant free. That’s decidedly different from it not modes of production—such as “spell-checking,” costing anything to produce. Along with many and “editing”—into the dustbins of history. other concerns, depending on the format and The idea is to think and produce simultaneous. print-run the publishing of each issue can add Transparency is key, along with an openness to- up to a tidy sum. In that regard we often col- wards the discussion of ideas, and the reformat- laborated with spaces and institutions who ap- ting of previous considerations in public. The preciate Red76 and the JRS and have a desire to JRS exists as friendly provocation in paper-form. see it continue. Without these relationships the JRS would not exist or, at least, would exist in a The Journal of Radical Shimming finds its very different way than it does. home in North Portland, Oregon and resides within the House to be Named in the Future. With this in mind we cannot thank James Voorhies enough. Jim, and everyone at the 5123 North Kerby Avenue Bureau for Open Culture at the Columbus Portland Oregon College of Art & Design have been a contin- 97217 ued inspiration and help. This issue, in part, came out of Red76 being included in Decent http://red76.com/jrs.html to Revolution, an exhibition curated by Jim [email protected] and organized through the B.O.C. The is- sue exists as much as a consideration of our The JRS is edited by Sam Gould of Red76, with work within Decent to Revolution as it is our the continued assistance, interest, and advice of time in Columbus and the people we encoun- such individuals as Gabriel Mindel Saloman, tered and were inspired by there. In turn we’d Dan S. Wang, Zefrey Throwell, Mike Wolf, like to thank Nate Padavick, Diana Matuszak, Laura Lee Baldwin, and many others in varying Nicholas Hoffman, & Cassie Troyan at the capacities. B.O.C. As well, everyone who took part in Surplus Seminar, and especially Anywhere/ This particular issue has been designed by Anyplace Academy and the crew of builders Scott Ponik that converged around it. This issue has found its way into the world, as well, through the as- Printed by Shapco Printing, Inc., Minneapolis sistance of Rhizome and The New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC, through their A Note Concerning this Issue of the JRS: commission of the YouTube School for Social Because we can, every issue of the JRS is free Politics, to which we are much obliged. And of charge. As this particular issue is being lastly, Scott Ponik—holy shit! What a mensch! produced in book form we wondered if it might not end up on the shelves of used bookstores In closing we’d like to dedicate this, Issue #9 at some point in its future, and if so, what of the JRS, to two new arrivals in the family: to do about it? If for some reason you didn’t Honora Casey Baldwin Gould & Esme Rose find this issue placed on your doorstep, or in Baldwin Gould. They are beautiful little girls a coffee shop, and handed to you by a friend who put up with their fathers exhaustion and saying, “here, you should read this. I think bad manners in light of his ill-fated dual attempt you’d really enjoy it,” but instead found it at editing and parenting, as well as teaching and residing next to the latest Ann Coulter rag, or projects (Christ!). Your father hopes that, in some other bit of fantasy, then we highly recommend way, the thoughts, considerations, and dreams of that you take it to the counter at once and the individuals within this issue regarding educa- declare, “Hey! You can’t sell this. Look right tion can inspire you to travel your own path and here, the publisher is stating explicitly that not take shit from anyone—not even your older the Journal of Radical Shimming is always brother. We all love you very much.