Explosions of Joy and Liberation

Tonight, after a long day of waking up blissfully-crabby from a sleepless night, biking to get a coffee grinder to sustain my habit, pedaling back to my house on the North East Side, going to a Free Stuff Exchange (I'm sure there's a politically astute name for this in obedient anarchist circles), eating a delicious sandwich at City-O-City with my roomies and Jerrilyn, being blissfully dragged to a toy store where I tried on leather hats and got anxious looking at board games, cards, and dice and finally surrendering myself to my home, I had a good conversation with Jerrilyn about politics in which I expressed my extreme disappointment in the hateful and grumpy nature of movements. Furthermore, thinking, as I often do, I was having an original, snowflake idea, I said "I want nothing to do with politics if they are not informed by joy and liberation." Later, as we were sitting in my basement living room futzing with books, I came across one of my favorite Jean Genet quotes, a phrase that pointed me in the direction of "joy and liberation." He said these words referring to his collaboration with the Black Panther Party:

"In terms of the United States, and perhaps on an even larger scale, it is this party, this revolutionary movement that is most capable, when it succeeds, of provoking an explosion of joy and liberation, an explosion already prefigured in some ways by the events of May {of 68) in France." MY PARENTHETICAL

What Genet saw prefigured in Paris, May of 68 and what he hoped the Black Panther Party could create was what progressive politics should be shooting for--the continual struggle towards conditions informed by and allowing explosions of joy and liberation! Whether using anarchist, socialist, progressive, or even liberal and conservative frameworks, we should be moving towards this goal. To satisfy it, people need food, housing, safety, education.

In 2007, in the United States, our land is toxic, our people are starving and without health-care, our social services have been destroyed, inflation skyrockets as wages have stagnated and remain below a living wage. People are in prison, police brutalize communities of color, lynching remains on the table as a means of expressing racist disgust. In short, explosions of joy and liberation are hard to imagine in this dystopia capitalism has born. Rather than despair, we must dream and create the world we want--we must create the conditions for joy and liberation. We must live, critique, fight, and win with torches of joy and liberation illuminating our path.