moment of caring

You are cleared to care for the next couple days about things like: global climate change, food distribution, wealth distribution. We did just have our own tsunami, as some jackass put it.

For the next few seconds it'll be alright to wonder outloud why it was the poor, elderly, and infirm who were unable to get out of the path of a hurricane that was seen coming for over a week.

Bask in the quivering sympathy, we're all humbled before the might of air and water.

Next week it'll be business as usual, more killing for freedom.

yeee-hah

ROAD TRIP!!!

Black Box is gonna drive all over Northern CA during the first two weeks of July. Here's the dates:

July 4th at Warm Water Cove w/The Symptoms in SF 2pm
July 8th at Warm Water Cove w/Death By Excess in SF 2pm
July 12th at Fulcrum Records w/Gruk in Chico 7pm
July 14th at the Arcata Peace and Justice Center in Arcata 7pm
July 16th at Burnt Ramen w/Born Dead in Richmond 8pm

All shows are all ages and $5 or less (cuz getting paid is for posers)

After this we should be building a new studio, recording 7 new tunes and maybe putting out a CDEP.

If You Plan on Remembering Dead People

You might want to listen to this, today on Against the Grain there was a great discussion of aging, death, and human consciousness and how they are affected by capitalism. Richard Lichtman was talking about his book Dying in America, which most of you all will do and certainly someone you care about will before you do, so maybe you should think on it and it's meaning a bit.

Buy Gas at Citgo

Really you should ride your bike, if you're shopping for a vehicle buy a diesel or hybrid, if you're an engineer design a diesel-electric hybrid. If you're like me and work 15+ miles from home, need to pick up heavy materials for work, and bought your ride prior to any deep consciousness of the alternatives at the edges of the US fuel system, then get your gas as Citgo.

Published on Monday, May 16, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Buy Your Gas at Citgo: Join the BUY-cott!

by Jeff Cohen

Looking for an easy way to protest Bush foreign policy week after week? And an easy way to help alleviate global poverty? Buy your gasoline at Citgo stations. And tell your friends.

Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation's oil revenue to benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela. The President is Hugo Chavez. Call him "the Anti-Bush."

Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela -- not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. There are 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the US. (Click here http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp to find one near you.) By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela's democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.

Instead of using government to help the rich and the corporate, as Bush does, Chavez is using the resources and oil revenue of his government to help the poor in Venezuela. A country with so much oil wealth shouldn't have 60 percent of its people living in poverty, earning less than $2 per day. With a mass movement behind him, Chavez is confronting poverty in Venezuela. That's why large majorities have consistently backed him in democratic elections. And why the Bush administration supported an attempted military coup in 2002 that sought to overthrow Chavez.

So this is the opposite of a boycott. Call it a BUYcott. Spread the word.

Of course, if you can take mass transit or bike or walk to your job, you should do so. And we should all work for political changes that move our country toward a cleaner environment based on renewable energy. The BUYcott is for those of us who don't have a practical alternative to filling up our cars.

So get your gas at Citgo. And help fuel a democratic revolution in Venezuela.

Jeff Cohen is an author and media critic (www.jeffcohen.org)

There are two Citgo's in Sonoma County, unfortunately they're partnered with 7-11 and add MTBE to the gas.

	1. 7-ELEVEN 33277 2648 SANTA ROSA BLVD. SANTA ROSA, CA 95407 (707) 544-1591 3.04 miles from the center
	2. 7-ELEVEN 33389 1704 E. COTATI AVE. ROHNERT PARK, CA 94928 (707) 792-0237 8.51 miles from the center

funny

here

me on TV?

I dunno if it'll end up in the abstracts or the video archive, but I just got interviewed by KFTY, about Cinco de Mayo. It'll be on at 7pm.

Update:

Man, did that ever suck. Next time I'll make sure I have a full time staff to prep me and a cool looking office to get interviewed in.

The Least Sucky Prequel Ever

(possibly barring the early version of the Exorcist prequel)

Revenge of the Sith, feels familiar. The oppressive obvious evil, and thankfully finally characters I can care about. I actually gave a shit about Anakin this time, felt sorry for Padme and Obi-Wan, and Yoda got to trash talk the Emperor. Lucas hasn’t recaptured the glory of The Empire Strikes Back or Star Wars with this installment, but he has finished the story and sharpened its message.

The Good: Anakin’s slide toward evil, the Emperor revealed, the fall of the Jedi

The Bad: Lucas is still romantically dead, the wookies are just window dressing, the Frankenstein moment, I wanted more bitterness from Anakin at the end

The Ugly: the effects are too good there is no wonder left it’s all just eye candy, with four climactic light saber duels there is a distinct lack of the mid-fight plot development of the originals, the twin “surprise” ending

There are a bunch of plot holes that will leave fan boys (like me) losing sleep.

Best line goes to Padme: “this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause”

some pre-Star Wars reading

In the Guardian Lucas admits Star Wars has roots in reality and that he has an opinion about the real world. Lucas's interview and especially his Q&A in WIRED shed some light on why the prequels suck (read: are so drastically different in ambiance and tone than the originals), and give me some hope that he'll make at least one more truely great film (probably not this one or Indy 4).

Oh yeah, suprise, suprise Kevin Smith loves Revenge of the Sith and the New Yorker doesn't.

white people have thin skin

There is a burgeoning new conversation about the nature of white supremacy, how to be an effective anti-racist, the meaning of the term “race traitor”, and a genuine asking of if it is possible for white people to escape whiteness in the world today.

I’m going to make several assumptions for the purpose of this post, that white supremacy exists, that white supremacy has been at the crux of the lefts impotence for the past 30 years, that white supremacy is a complex social/power structure, that white supremacy is not a personality trait, that white supremacy doesn’t have an on/off switch.

Over at Anarchist People Of Color’s website there is an article that, while approaching sectarian sniping, presents core ideas I’m sympathetic to. White privilege and white supremacy are fundamental parts of the ruling power structure. White people who think that white privilege can be left behind after going to some workshops, need to think some more (snarking aside the CWS workshops are vital, useful and important). Bring The Ruckus respond to APOC’s article with their own slide towards sniping, but also make many good points, it’s a good primer on Race Traitor Theory, which boils down to acting right. When a white person witnesses another white person abusing (or even using) the power vested in them by the complex social structure of white supremacy, it is always right to call it out for what it is, people who say they are concerned with social change have an obligation to act right.

What disturbs me the most about both of these articles is the self righteous tone. What is the real concern here, dismanteling white power or sounding like a know it all? This kind of self-referential writing and insider bickering has kept the good ideas of the left from spreading. Whether or not I’m fully satisfied with the development of Race Traitor Theory, it definitely brings a deeper understanding and higher level of conversation than today’s popular “reverse-racism” pabulum. It is an idea worth talking about and struggling over.

Socialists are often criticized for subordinating race to class. Today the left seems to conflate race and class (poor people/workers = people of color). This view doesn’t reflect reality; most workers, welfare recipients, and poor people in the US are white. If the left cannot find away to speak to those people, we will continue to lose. The advantage to a simple socialist world view is that it attempts to flatten oppression, this also doesn’t reflect reality, a black homeless vet is gonna get harassed more often than a white homeless vet even if every other fact is their lives are identical. However the socialist organizing model makes sense, if white workers can be brought into class consciousness, it doesn’t take much to expose white supremacy.

Yesterday Hard Knock Radio, interviewed Adam Mansbach author ofAngry Black White Boy. Mansbach, like me, is a white Hip-Hop fan. Unlike me he became an active participant in Hip-Hop, while I continued to smoke the punk rock and visit Hip-Hop for the Public Enemys and NWAs. Angry Black White Boy is a race novel in the tradition of Invisible Man, the twist is the protagonist is a white college freshman determined to be down, and show black people what Hip-Hop is all about. I think this book and Jeff Chang's recent Hip-Hop history will add crucial elements to the renewed wrestling with white supremacy. This conversation needs to continue, but it also needs to result in practice and that practice needs to be summed up and discussed. Rinse and repeat.

look it's me

yep it's also a good place to go kick it and cast off the man's oppresion, if only for 10 or 15 minutes at a time.

Serenity

Last night instead of Copwatching I saw the rough cut of Serenity the big screen follow-up to Joss Whedon's brilliant TV series Firefly.

If you are a fan of Whedon or Firefly, the movie is awesome; if not you might have trouble tracking the ten character main cast. I'd suggest begging, borrowing, or stealing the DVD's of Firefly to understand the nuances of Inayra, Book, Kaylee, Zoe, and Wash; otherwise they'll come off as underdeveloped foils for Mal (which really is all they are, as Mal died in everyway but physically after emerging from a civil war on the losing side; the crew of his boat are expressions of all the parts of himself that he has cut-off). It opens with a long multi-layered flashback/dream/history lesson that effectively sets-up the world of the film, then quickly sets up the conflict and then the first hilarious and terrifying action sequence. I'm damn glad that Reavers (screaming, cannibalistic, self-mutilating, rapists with spaceships) aren't real

Serenity successfully rises above the overblown TV show feel of some of Whedon's other big screen projects, most notably Alien: Resurrection. The big action set pieces are just candy, the meat of this movie is the characters and the story. The tone is significantly darker than the series, the stakes are higher, it really feels like everyone is going to die at several points. I choked up at a couple of the more vicious turns, someting I haven't felt from a movie since Ricky Baker got killed in Boyz in the Hood.

Hopefully this will get punched up over the summer, the print I saw needed color correction, some sound work, and some more transit shots.

The real treat was the intro and Q&A doled out by Alan Tudyk and Gina Torres this kind of fan appreciation is rare, and illustrates the crucial genius of Whedon and his crew. They understand that popular culture is a conversation between the creators and the viewer/participants, they don't sit in a tower and spit out a product every couple of years to rake in a bit more cash. They are passionate about the stories they tell, who they tell them to, and how they are told. Input, feedback and questions are cherished, not dismissed as fanboy revisionism.

Science fiction has always been away to talk about the world we live in. Now that Whedon is unencumbered by Fox TV, he has some very pointed comments to make about where we are living, what we are doing, and most importantly how we think about it.

scary or funny or both

I recently heard a story about local army recruiters literally kidnapping a kid, I'm chasing the details of that, but until that gets unraveled check this. I found it at one good move.

Then if you need to chill just listen here. The song is by the party party

Finals are almost over, the shop is open, the last big hurdle is home buying and moving, then I should be up in here shooting off my big mouth some more.

where have I been?

huffing paint, hanging sheetrock, stocking books over here the grand opening thingy will be Mayday

go here and read

http://shawnewald.blogspot.com/2005/03/what-do-we-do-now.html

Yippeee

I just watched episode 21 of the Star Wars cartoon and I'm 7 years old, gonna go play with spaceships, see ya.

By the way I'm writing something about the local UFW contract struggle with Gallo, and the reconstituted MEChA chapter at SRJC, and maybe something about the red-baiting SRJC Republican Club (a member of which also edits the campus newspaper, so I'm doubting my stuff'll see print there)

A Culture Of Resistance

a blurb I wrote for the Northbay Progressive about the Food Not Bombs group I work with.

Santa Rosa Food Not Bombs has held a weekly protest against war, capitalism and poverty for over four years. Every Sunday at 5pm in Courthouse Square, at the corner of 3rd and Mendocino in downtown Santa Rosa, free food is served to all takers along with progressive literature, art, music and conversation. Food Not Bombs links the issues of war, huger, poverty and capitalism by publicly asking why there is money for bombs but not for food. We answer the question by salvaging food that has been removed from market shelves and restaurant tables, and serving fresh free healthy vegan meals.

In these days of increasing repression and the current culture of complacency and complicity, it is crucial to build a culture of resistance. Food Not Bombs is activism on the “duh” level of human consciousness; capitalism creates poverty, capitalism creates waste food, Food Not Bombs brings the two together illustrating the failings of the marketplace. We model a different way for people to relate to power and wealth. Instead of the status quo where power comes down from above via police, bosses or bureaucrats; we organize people with a common interest (eating) to secure a common goal (food) and exercise our collective power to make our vision (a meal) real. We also remove food from the marketplace and insist that it is a human right to eat, demonstrating a way for everyone to get what they need by working together and sharing resources. Food Not Bombs does not claim to be a stand alone solution for the problems of war and capitalism. It is a protest and a glimpse of future possiblities.

We always need help. We reuse pint sized or larger plastic food containers as serving dishes, which can be dropped off at the Peace and Justice Center. Food can be brought directly to a serving, or call Ben at 707-544-3266 to arrange a pick up. Establishing new serving times and locations has been a goal for awhile. To do this we need more volunteers, a few more kitchens and more food. Currently we get food donations from Community Market and the Redwood Empire Food Bank, occasionally a few industrious dumpster divers will share their finds with us. We need someone skilled at schmoozing grocery store produce managers to secure new donations for us. Every day grocery stores throw out perfectly good food because it’s ugly or reached it’s sell by date. We would like to recover and serve all of it. We meet twice a month at the Free Mind Media Infospace, 546 Pacific Ave, call Ben at 707-544-3266 for dates and times, or come by any serving and introduce yourself.

secret desire

I've been thinking about looking for work as a video game designer for awhile, read this and you'll have an idea why, especially the Greg Costikyan rant

why do "they" hate "us" (in progress)

In one of the fan documentaries, about the anticipation of the Star Wars prequels, there is a scene that juxtaposes Kosovar refugees queued up for UN relief rations with Star Wars fans queued up for Episode One toys. Now while the US occupies Iraq, Star Trek fans can muster dozens to protest the cancelation of Enterprise while cops go on vacation to Iraq getting thousands of dollars from US taxpayers, all this is supported by SUVs with yellow ribbon magnets and images of "typical" american life are summerized for the world by The O.C., Desperate Housewives, etc. popular american thought is represented by such stalwarts as any network talking head, then there's the the new comediantellectual (don't get me wrong Jon Stewart and Micheal Moore are funny and smart and have captured the zietgiest in a way I'm almost jealous of, but both are lacking any real systemic critism of the anything and Al "let's buy out urban multi-lingual community AM stations and broadcast screaming white people" Franken... oh forget it)

MONKEY ATTACK!!!

go look and don't fuck with a monkey!

police state

My brother edits a zine, their latest issue focuses on the creeping American police state. This is what I wrote, I'm not really satisfied with it, I didn't give myself enough time. I'll probably come back to it, and dig more into the social bifurcation that occurs due to the tiny privileges that are doled out via gender, ethnicity, race, etc. Also the slow ratcheting of repression, that quite literally started with immigrants continued to activists and now teachers.

I’d define a police state as one where police act with impunity. That means we live in one. Occasionally there is something like the Riders case in Oakland, the Ramparts case in LA, or the Bari vs. FBI judgment; meanwhile everyday people are gunned down essentially for their skin color and class position. There is broad acceptance of the idea that the streets of America are seconds away from open cannibalistic barbarism with only a thin blue line tethering us on this side of savagery. This vision is built on a foundation of white supremacy, a fractured community that divides in every possible way (gender, culture, national origin, class, and geographic region), male dominance and a mystification of power.

If we use a linear model of oppression (which I think is grossly inaccurate and devalues actual human experience, but does make big ideas easier to understand and communicate) with Black and Brown urban poor at the “bottom” and white men in positions of economic, military and political power at the top, we get a grossly simple view of social life in America. It is easy to understand that the people in the middle will spend most of their time looking up at the positions they are told to desire, positions that narrow self interest make desirable, people want a secure future, they want a home, healthcare, food, leisure time; people will envy and emulate those they see with what they want. People will rarely check to see who they are standing on. Only when the foundation gets shaky will they check. So the people in the middle won’t look at the abuse suffered at the bottom unless a big ruckus is made, or that abuse starts to creep up the ladder.

Police in America act with impunity because what they do is seen as legitimate by society at large. The job of revolutionaries is to point out illegitimate power. Cops that taser someone for raising their voice or walking away or walking toward them are using power illegitimately, shooting anti-war protesters with wooden dowels is an illegitimate use of power, the daily harassment and intimidation of people of color is an illegitimate use of power; the war on drugs, the war on immigrants, the war on dissent are all illegitimate. It is the job of revolutionaries to tell these stories. We need to point out that the police are not neutral, they have a job, and they work for one section of society against another section of society. We need to guard against the traps of individualism; “one time this cop caught me drinking and let me go,” great I suppose that is an adequate answer to the problem of capitalism too; some people get rich so the system must work. People concerned with the advancing police state should find out how to report for their community radio stations and weekly tabloids, the bigger the audience the better. Oppressed people organically use secrecy and subterfuge to organize, but breaking out into the broad public consciousness is when substantive change can happen.

The best way I know to increase awareness of the police state is to organize around it. Copwatch is a good model of year round activity, October 22nd is a good special event, The Stolen Lives Project needs new researchers desperately, and the Ella Baker Center has a project called Bay Area Police Watch that does great work. Doing this work it is easy to get bogged down in negativity, I did Stolen Lives research for about a month, it required reading newspaper archives of every killing in the country on whatever day was being researched, definitely a downer; but I also met families who where fearless in the face a state murder, a huge inspiration. Any positivity needs to be cherished, any small victory, even if it is demonstration with 10 people, needs to be accented. It is this constant resistance that will build a movement.

What the police get away with today is analogous to lynching in the Jim Crow south. We need to talk about it that way. It is a method of violent social control aimed largely at people of color and the working class.

Way back at the beginning of this I talked about the mystification of power, by that I meant a lack of popular understanding of the power of individual people. No one can argue the power of an individual cop; he can kill you and get away with it. No one can argue the power of COINTELPRO it still has folks on the left biting each other on the back 20 years after it’s last suspected operation. Everyone argues their ability to make change, all of us have whined that we can’t possibly change anything; there is too much apathy, too much affluence, too much state power, too little consciousness, too much TV, too much stupidity, too little initiative. It’s all bullshit. We can do this, and what is better, we have to do this. Most of us have had some kind of time travel fantasy where we assassinated Hitler, or bring a crate of Uzis to escaped slaves, or burn Columbus’ boats; we live in a time like those, we are on the cusp of historical change we need to act.