What a week, folks. A week that included:
- Going to a reading discussion about the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (the subject of Detroit: I Do Mind Dying), attended by two former League members (one of whom worked thirty years on an auto assembly line…..DAMN), still fiery and utterly inspiring
- Huffing, puffing, and grinning up Berkeley hills on my gorgeous new bike
- Feeling grateful for warm, dry, cozy home-shelter from the winter rain
- Feeling furious, though not really surprised, at the redoubled repression of US prisoners: disappearing resistors and expanding prison labor to fill the gaps in state budgets
- Making plans to read aloud to our incredibly fly and friendly 80-something-year-old neighbor, Mr. Posie
- Being there for friends while they cry, and asking friends to be there for me while I cry
- Brainstorming ways of bringing revolutionary perspectives to this weekend’s efforts to defend sexual health care
- Showing up with Ryan at a 6am anti-eviction action, a few blocks from our apartment, to find out that it had already won: once the media started contacting Wells Fargo for comment, they backed down (for now) from taking away this woman’s home
That’s it for me, folks. Hope your week was filled with ups, as well as downs — but most of all, spaciousness enough for both. See you Monday!
Kloncke 
Dang! Wish I could have been at the LRBW reading. Keep me posted on the next one.
Crying :( I’m always around.
Definitely will! I didn’t even realize that actual League members would be there, so it was a wonderful surprise.
Yeah, crying. The backlash against the poly post has been stronger than I imagined. But there are good things coming out of it, too. Let’s talk and move soon. I’m thinkin’ on themes for that project of yours. :)
nice bike!
Thoughts on the prison labor article. I think it’s a pretty bad idea to lump all prison labor under a label of inmate repression. The article itself is pretty poorly written, and I’m not really sure what its bottom line is, but this is a really complicated issue. The forms of labor he addresses in the article do not present a problem to me. I take issue with the way in which its presented – using prison labor to cut costs is actually not that simple of an equation (although I think the idea of creating community prison gardens is actually a really awesome one). Prisons are more likely to cut all programming to save money, and a lot of them do. That’s a pretty terrible option.
The article doesn’t touch on coerced labor, or inhumane conditions where labor exists. It doesn’t even touch on the complexity of using prison labor and the restrictions placed on goods manufactured by inmates. I wish it had explored the particular programs it brings up more in depth, and without the tagline that states are using labor to save money. It’s a reactionary title, and the article fails to adequately address the magnitude of the crisis prisons are facing today, and the real implications of trying to cut costs by having inmates prepare their own foods, for instance, as opposed to cutting costs by providing inmates with less food, by packing more and more inmates into the same overcrowded prison, by cutting all programming, etc. I think the real issue is the state of today’s prisons – who’s in them, why, for how long, and in what conditions. Offering programs for inmates to opt in or out of is a net positive, in my opinion, in a really complex issue.
On this: “Showing up with Ryan at a 6am anti-eviction action, a few blocks from our apartment, to find out that it had already won: once the media started contacting Wells Fargo for comment, they backed down (for now) from taking away this woman’s home”
Yay! Wondering – who got the media’s attention?
On polyamory: you have my support and well wishes.