I have to thank Goddard advisor Rick Benjamin for singing this poem to us yesterday. It’s about time I overcame my prejudice against poetry, don’t you think?
to my friend, Jerina
listen,
when i found
there was no safety
in my father’s house
i knew there was none
anywhere. you are right
about this, how i nurtured
my work not myself, how i left
the girl wallowing in her own shame
and took on the flesh
of my mother. but listen,
the girl is rising in me, not willing
to be left to the silent fingers
in the dark, and you are right
she is asking for more than
most men are able to give,
but she means to have what she has earned,
sweet sighs, safe houses, hands she can trust.
A beautiful catch-up conversation with my friend Junot has got me viewing photos of this week’s camping trip with new eyes.
As we reconceptualize our ideas of care and stress relief, striving to integrate our healing and fighting work, I feel challenged to question my relationship to this restorative vacation in the redwood forest. Not “question” like browbeat myself about it, but firmly and lovingly investigate my own views.
Do I see these hikes as a kind of spiritual refueling? Do I see them as material for photographs? Do I view the trees and streams and skies as teachers, as providers of wisdom, about impermanence, identity, and borders? Do I see myself as responsible to these paths? These non-wildernesses? Are we in dialogue, or am I looking for an uncomplicated, friendly, comfortable, and shallow “mothering”? Is the earth a being with rights? Is the earth a being beyond rights?
Final zine, y'all! This one arrived to me in the mail as a gift (among many!), along with the usual scholarly correspondence, from my amazingly heartful, talented, and fly poet / professor / academic advisor / friend, Gale P. Jackson.
I love it because
Its content is both instructive and creative, showing “Techniques, materials, How to / Where to [of] Banners, Signs, Floats, theater, Music, songs, chants, puppets, etc.”
It was published in 1985, making it one year older than me
The illustrations and layout are incredible
Some content is time-specific and local, making it political propaganda as well as a DIY manual.
I’ll try to let this one speak for itself. With deep gratitude and appreciation to Gale! Hopefully some of the specific contents will infuse themselves into my organizing, and be reflected there.
What, you thought Zine Week would adhere to linear time?
Just kidding; sorry for the lapse! Today’s zine, from a member of Austin-based group ¡ella pelea!, is especially exciting for its application of class consciousness theory from Advance the Struggle’s Oscar Grant pamphlet (featured on Zine Week Day 2) to the Animal Rights Movement (ARM) in the U.S.
Last month I talked a little bit about transformative justice and the dope workshop that folks from the Philly Stands UP collective offered here in Oakland. This zine is one I picked up at that workshop: kind of like a primer for the PSU model.
There’s a lot I like about this zine. Its unpretentious candor. The ways it contextualizes itself, pointing to overlapping work that others are doing. (The final chapter is an excerpt from Color of Violence: the INCITE! Anthology.) The way it foregrounds survivor support in its Points of Unity:
We are a group that survivors can come to for help and support. We will always support survivors and ensure survivor autonomy, where they will always be in control of how a situation is dealt with.
. . .
We do not support the prison system as a viable means of rehabilitation for perpetrators, but we will always support a survivor’s wishes and engage the legal system on any level necessary.
Sorry for the late post again! Today’s zine is already a Bay Area radical classic, examining the politics around the recent wave of struggle following a caught-on-tape police murder. A white cop shot a young Black Oakland resident in the back, while the young man was lying face-down on a subway platform. (This officer, by the way, may be released from prison next month, having served less than a year of his 2-year sentence.)
Published in its original version back in mid-July of 2009, the new updated edition contains the same dope analysis of the role of nonprofits, histories of rioting, racist policing and more, plus a new preface, more art, and a supplementary article: “Moving Beyond Violence vs. Nonviolence.”
In my forthcoming guest column in make / shift magazine, I draw on A/S’s analysis of the Oscar Grant movement to illustrate my own alternatives to liberal, relativist interpretations of Buddhist teachings. You’ll have to wait til the magazine comes out to read my application of their deft explications, but in the meantime why not throw down a few dollars for a copy (just click the Donate button on the Advance the Struggle blog) and print the primary source material yourself? :)
Ink drought in your printer? No worries; you can read the web version, too. Still donate, though!
I’m not really sure why it took me so long to get into zines. Even now I’m not particularly ‘into’ them, to tell the truth — which is strange, considering that I love handmade objects, and I obviously love informal self-publishing. True zine-ophiles (ha! xenophiles!) might cringe at overly broad definitions of the form, but to a layperson like me, the essence of zines seems to be (a) self-manufacture and (b) text and images. Why wouldn’t a blog count? (Unless, of course, you’re a stickler about the handmade-object thing, which, really, I wouldn’t blame you, because as I said, I have a crush on handmade objects.)
Today’s zine captured my heart immediately, not only because it was made by one of my all-time favorite bloggers / writers, who goes by brownfemipower (or bfp for short), but also because it arrived at my home in the mail as a gift, all the way from Ypsilanti, Michigan, accompanied by a beautiful note in sky-blue ink.
Some days all I can really manage to do is make an omelet. Not that I'm fishing for compliments — I'm aware and confident that this was a fucking phenomenal omelet, filled with beet greens sautéed with garlic, lemon zest, great-tasting olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and just a touch of brown sugar, then rounded out with grape tomatoes and goat milk blue cheese, and finished with cilantro. Tremendous. One for me, one for Ryan. And our kitchen conversation during the omelet forging somehow led to me drawing the following charts about the Cycle of Productive Capital:
Both of these charts represent my still-dim comprehension of the concept, and if someone else has better charts or corrections to add, please share! Minimally, this illustration should probably be in the shape of a spiral to show how M'>M, and the extra (profit) gets re-invested? I dunno.
Some images from a 5-day strike at the Children’s Hospital just a few blocks from where Ryan, Mai and I live. The contracts that the bosses are trying to push would include so many “takeaways” (cuts to previously held benefits) that nurses who work in the hospital would no longer be able to afford to bring their own children there for treatment.
Ryan and I chatted up a lot of the workers for a while, and thanked them for setting an inspiring example by actually going out on strike and fighting back. Lots of positive energy, aided, I think by the freshness of the action (it was the first of the 5 days) and a steady stream of honks of encouragement from folks driving down Martin Luther King Jr Way.
Check the latest at the EastBaySol blog — we had a fun, spirited picket that brought together militant workers from domestics to teachers to students to hotel and warehouse workers. I don’t have a photo of the flyer we used but I’ll try to get one and add it soon.
PICKETING AOII
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Monday afternoon Bay Sol East kept up the fight in solidarity with former sorority “houseboy” William over in Berkeley, staging an informational picket at Alpha Omicron Pi’s weekly meeting. With handmade signs, a bullhorn, and half-sheet flyers for the sorority sisters, our group of a dozen or so created quite a spectacle on the quiet hillside street. Chants called for “Justice For Domestic Workers!” and urged AO∏ to “Exceed the Expectation” (their motto) and “Cease the Exploitation!”
To cap off the action, we collectively delivered a petition signed by 82 neighbors who support our fight. We’re grateful to local student co-ops for their enthusiasm!
In an extra-special demonstration of solidarity, we were joined on the line by a leader from the ongoing boycott at the Hotel Frank in San Francisco, as well as two visiting members of ¡Ella Pelea!, an Austin-based organization of “students and community members, both queer and straight, multi-gendered and multi-racial” who are fighting for democratic control over the University of Texas Austin. All told, our group included warehouse workers, teachers, students, hotel workers, grocery workers, mothers, writers, and more — demonstrating the diversity of labor that’s possible with a solidarity network model.
If you didn’t get an email or phone call about this action and wanted to receive one, our bad! We’re working hard to get our phone tree to reliably bear fruit. Feel free to send us a strongly worded email demanding that we hit you up next time.
Kloncke 