Melancholy Renewal

Last night after picking Jessi up from the airport, I talked late into the night with Emily, my old friend, sometimes sweetheart, and sometimes collaborator about everything from her experiences squatting in Barcelona to the ethics of remaining in cities verses going to rural areas and learning practical skills. Both of us tend to be fairly argumentative, particularly when it comes to intersections of art and activism. Nonetheless, speaking with her felt good. She is an old friend who knows me at my best and my worst and challenges me in both states to higher levels of action, creation, and thought. It is wonderful to have her in my life.

It is wonderful to have so many people in my life.

Its strange to have so many friends in so many different places, people I love and people that love me too. While we are all working on amazing projects and learning new things from new people, I often wish I could have a slightly simpler existence where the people I loved were together and our experiences were shared. I imagine a party where all the people I love come together and enjoy each other late into the night.

I am settling back into Denver after an incredible weekend shooting interviews at Critical Resistance 10. My heart aches with the absence of missing friends, lovers lost and lovers found. Autumn feels strong this year. So many projects, so many acts of love withering as the first days of fall chill. The highs of a relationship, an 8 year project, production around two political conventions all ending in late August-early September have made the past few weeks a trying month. But as night comes on earlier and the moon blazes sharply in the sky, I feel connected to the earth, its return to the dirt. I feel ready for the renewal that comes in completion and loss and eager to see what grows through the winter and the spring.

I have spoken at length to my friends about our collective desire to find room for creative projects, art, culture, and experimentation. The fall and winter will be good for this.

CR10 and Me!

I'm super excited about heading out to Oakland with bad-ass producer Malia Bruker to shoot interviews with the incredible activists who will be attending Critical Resistance 10. I am happy Free Speech TV will be dedicating resources to this important prison abolition conference that his been going on for the past 10 years!

Lots of love to Denver!

Capitalists Burn Wall Street Down!

I enjoy watching rich people cry as their stocks implode and all the money they've been stealing, all the money they've been pretending they could lend disappears into the ether.

The United States is a government whose wealth is founded in genocide, white supremacy, and barbaric capitalism. Watching the ruling class fret gives me great pleasure. I hope to see the day when their empire falls and the rest of the world rises to the occasion.

Let it be known that millions of people deserve retribution for the crimes of the United States ruling class. Every act of injustice committed by the greedy only ensures another bullet in their murderous heads.

Let the stock markets burn and liberated people build the world we want to see!

Afghan-Americans Protest US Bombings

My friend and colleague Fatima Mojadiddy just completed this short video about a protest at the Federal Building in Los Angeles where Afghan-Americans gathered to demand the U.S. stop bombing Afghanistan.

As we continue slogging through the depressing policy nuances of the electoral cycle, its critical to remember that Obama supports an escalation of troops in Afghanistan. What he perceives as "the right war" is an excuse to kill the poorest of the poor--Afghan civilians struggling after decades of violence, war, and poverty.

Woody Allen Made My Heart Squishy!

My heart is swooning with amorphous, delicious, crushy heartache after seeing Woody Allen's incredibly beautiful exploration of love: Vicky, Christina, Barcelona! Rarely does a movie capture so many of love's dilemmas so well.

Sex, Drugs, and Environmental Destruction

Between having cocaine delivered to the office and oral sex with subordinates, the over-partied leadership of the Department of the Interior has taken the U.S. government's impulse to fuck up to a whole new level. These creeps who brag about protecting our natural resources have been taking bribes, doing drugs, and having sex with big oil reps. In the meantime, our environment gets screwed.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I think its just creepy that the Department of the Interior would have any desire to do it with people who work at Chevron, Shell, and other nasty energy companies. I can imagine a lot of kinky fantasies, but sleeping with those slimy creeps takes the cake.

This is why any day of the week I'd prefer to do it with the black-clad, sweaty arm-pit lovers in the Earth and Animal Liberation Fronts than entertain the idea that electoral politics in this corrupt capitalist system will every be more than an orgy of ecological destruction lubricated by big oil. Unfortunately, all these eco-types are stuck fighting this corrupt system and can't just sit around doin' it. Somebody has to protect the "interior" and the tasteless, powder-noses in the government sure as shit won't.

Defenders of Equality Vs. Postmodern Nazis: Jessie Vs. Jessica--Colorado Decides

On Colorado Decides, Colorado Progressive Coalition's Jessie Ulibarri boldly defended equal opportunities for people of color and women in Colorado while debating Jessica Corry, someone I intuit from her creepy, right-wing appropriation of civil rights lingo is little more than a sophisticated, post-modern Nazi happy to destroy opportunities for women and people of color using a well crafted but patently false "civil rights" rhetoric. Jessica works for an organization called The Colorado Civil Rights Initiative which is working tirelessly to sponsor Amendment 46, the so-called "Civil Rights Amendment" which is working to roll-back equal opportunity hiring and higher education enrollment.

Ward Connerly, the initiatives key out-of-state funder, has enthusiastically welcomed the Ku Klux Klan's endorsement of past initiatives. Connerly perceives the KKK as an organization capable of logic and reason rather than hate. When the key funder of your organization/initiative is willing to accept the support of an organization guilty of a century of genocidal racism, lynchings, and pro-fascist, nationalist posturing to defend a so-called "libertarian" and so-called "civil rights" act, the true complicity between Corry, Connerly and white supremacy is obvious.

When will "American" "Libertarians" get it in their head that being complicit with fascist organizations, right wing policies, and globally destructive economic agendas will in no way help the cause of "liberty." Having appropriated libertarian rhetoric, these pomo fascists working tirelessly to destroy equal opportunities have had the audacity to steal "civil rights" discourse. Shame on them for bolstering white supremacy while degrading the spirit of justice.

Appropriations of civil rights and feminist rhetoric designed to attack the equal opportunities of women and communities of color must be criticized. Those who perpetrate legislative violence against communities of color and women and who thereby find alliances with the KKK and other fascists must be confronted as participants in the broader networks they associate with, networks bolstered by the support of hate groups and violent, racist extremists.

Experiments Beyond the Brutality

Washing the pepper spray from my clothes and waking up regularly to startling dreams of riot cops, ex-lovers, and frenzied television production, I can't help but feel a bit depressed.

While the DNC was happening, significantly fewer cops plagued the neighborhood I live in, an impoverished community on the North East side of Denver. Now that protest has stopped, the neighborhood has filled up with cops again. Virtually no sustainable links between organizing against the police brutality against protesters and organizing against the regular violence in this neighborhood was created. While white subcultures flourished in both Denver and St. Paul, strong links were not made between anti-convention activism and the ongoing, life-or-death struggles faced by people of color. While these struggles were addressed rhetorically, and organizations such as Recreate 68 did attempt to make connections, the protests remained largely white.

I wonder if the enormous infrastructure set up by white subcultures to facilitate protest will ever have a real impact on the daily lives of poor people. I fear it will be used to simply facilitate cathartic protests that release the pressure in this steam-cooker of late capitalism; protests that create demonstrations of antagonism; protesters that fail to build sustainable alternatives; protests that falsely excuse people of privilege from their complicity in the violence of oppression.

Perhaps to scream out in the streets, to smash windows, to destroy cop cars, to fight the police, and directly, physically confront the perpetrators of violence is not enough. After 9/11, a broken window hardly garners media attention. After millions have been assaulted, falsely imprisoned, brutalized, and degraded by the police, a few blows at a line of riot cops hardly challenges the system. Perhaps the level of sophistication, military strategy, and organization needed to militantly confront global capitalism and the state in the streets exceeds our current capacity.

The old question I would like to re-pose is what forms of creation and destruction will most effectively eliminate relationships of oppression and most directly lead to global liberation, conditions for joy and possibility. If the answer to this is found in the shattering of Macy's windows, hand me a rock. If the answer to this is found in tactics of greater aggression, let's arm ourselves. If the answer to this is found in building strong community ties, networking diverse localities, and creating alternative economies, let's get to work. Sadly, we don't know which of these solutions will work outside of practice. Armed struggle may be a death trap. Window-breaking may be futile. Community organizing may never work. Unless we try, informed by history, we will never find out.

Kudos to those who struggled in Denver and St. Paul. Kudos to all who work regularly for liberation at home, while traveling, at convergences, and in isolation. Kudos to those who risk it all and dare to experiment.

So much to be done. So many experiments to be had!

Once again, Gramsci's dictum comes to mind: Pessimism of the intellect. Optimism of the will.

Back from Saint Paul: Anarchists Be Proud!

I returned from St. Paul to Denver at 9 AM this morning, exhausted but victorious in helping produce 16 hours of Crashing the Party, Free Speech TV's coverage of the Democratic and Republican National Convention Protests. From creating a live daily update of the legal situation in St. Paul and Minneapolis from I-Witness Video, a heroic group of video activists who put themselves directly on the front line to document police violence against demonstrators to programming daily shorts by Submedia, Mobile Broadcast News, Rochester Indymedia, and others, I have seen the bravery, courage, relentless pursuit of excellence, joy and desire for liberation in organizations and individuals from throughout the country. Many of us learned new skills, found better ways of working together, criticized and responded to criticisms in order to move our work forward. Despite an enormous amount of state violence including house raids, physical attacks, pepper spray, arrest, tear gas, concusion grenades, and other weapons, poor people, anarchists, anti-war activists and others worked together to challenge the violence of the two party system. As we reflect on what worked and what is not working in U.S. anarchist protest movements, we must keep in mind that tens of thousands organized successfully, built infrastructure that will last well beyond the protests, and fought boldly for justice, equality, liberty, and peace.

The strength of our networks, the boldness and persistence of our actions, our love of humanity, the earth, and possibility demonstrates that we are capable of building the world we want to see. The tools we have. Lets do it.