02 March 2013

link minded folks

organizing as if social relations matter

its always vindicative
when i find someone thinking
along lines
i also walk

Organizing, good organizing, is to my mind the slow, steady, one-on-one building of relations and interconnections that are at odds with how people are treated under capitalism.
go on
im listening

Instead of instrumentalizing people for what they can give us or do for us, we look to each other as having worth unto ourselves, and for how we can cement relations of sociability, collaboration, and solidarity

Expedient activism falls apart under its own flimsy weight; there’s little there to sustain it, especially when the going inevitably gets rough or disappointing. Here, patient and what appears to be joyful organizing might just have a fighting chance of leaving something in its wake

that speaks to my experiences
socialist sectarianism

beliefs in changing
behavior & culture
creative relationships
transcend isolation

it takes work
says cindy milstein
something i am learning also
from the revolution starts
at home

reaching out
finding people
putting effort
not into sign
waving ranting
spectaclework

socalled actions
recognizing instead
building the world we want
begins with living the life
we believe in

As now-deferred prospective student after student got up to read their varied, often-eloquent remarks, or have them read by a current Cooper Union student or an alumni, for upward of an hour, it became clearer and clearer how much work went into finding, educating, involving, and gaining the support and participation of these frequently far-afieldpotential students.

not
mind you
a population
who would seem
accessible useful
in an
expedient way

beautiful
also

That no tuition, even within a hierarchical and select structure, still manages to engender a tangible freedom to imagine social goodness, and the freedom (of thought and financial constraints) to organize in more imaginative as well as qualitative ways
in the face
of the anarchists
& far leftists
not though the sectarian socialists
in this case

but in the face
of those who want to bring it
all down now now now
with a brick

yes yes yes
sympathies
we want it to be so easy
revolution happens suddenlike
but there must be
work lessons compromise
failures effort love
changing culture
changing material
changing structure

i look forward to reading more
from this beautiful blog

yours for the revolution
forbidden books

01 March 2013

meditation on london sympathy

relations with comrade london
initially cold

grade 7 or 8
call of the wild
awful teacher
old white lady
gave me my first d
cant even remember
what for
or her name

not impressed
boy nature wolf story
just didnt speak to me

college i think
to build a fire
shorter
more urgent
dire

man vs nature
just not
theme i appreciate
i guess
but
clumsiness
that sense of

what has been done
cannot now be undone

in the worst possible way

i imagine that spoke to
me better

it was years later yet
mayday books of course
i laid eye on the iron heel
dystopian fiction from
the crypto socialist

not so crypto turns
rather unspoken often
hushed up but perhaps
a fact asserting itself
a little more now that
leftist ideas are if not
fashionable at least
a subject at all again

& the iron heel
well not the best dystopian fiction
ive ever read

honestly that honor would have to go
to 1984 & hunger games
in a fight to the death between them
maybe amiable defiant alliance

anyway
not bad prescient way
format somewhat innovative
its time considered

heard now by way
of the nature manly rumor mill
comrade london was into nietzsche
social darwinism too
complicating character
& strange kinship
synthesis of divergent tastes
must needs find
a biography

speak now mediocre brother
from the halls of the dead

yours for the revolution
forbidden books

28 February 2013

clearly ahead of my time

i stopped caring
about the oxford comma
before it was cool

yes thats a hipster joke

also apparently
grammars role
oppression
privilege
theres small growing debate
some of it sadly
tumblr
& out my reach

good times
good
times

clear communication nice
in business government whatever

choice
ambiguity
fascism
you know where i stand

yours for the revolution
forbidden books

27 February 2013

dont call it chaos

"Their error arises from their failure to allow there are different kinds of order. If researchers seek only the kinds of order with which Westerners are today familiar, they will miss, or reject as disorder, all other orders."

makes me think
of every time ive heard
dismissals about chaos

in whose eyes
you have to wonder

are we missing
opportunities
for other orders
other stories

yours for the revolution,
forbidden books

26 February 2013

post hipster art

looks like the seattle art scene
has made quite the gaffe
in thinking
one of their beloved artists
is just another hipster

what do you do with white nationalist art
once the irony is gone?
asks hyperallergic

the pitfalls of tolerance

how do you deal with intolerance?

yours for the revolution
forbidden books

25 February 2013

press 1 to plead guilty press 2 to plead innocent

article entitled paperwork against the people
tackling some very issues i have
even down to dmv

dissent quarterly
looks pretty cool check it out

so only thing i have
to add to all that
is that bureaucracy
though its existed more/less
since ancient china

so legend goes

hit its stride with invent
& sophistication of
the state
that bestest of our friends

just like how markets
transactions profit
commodities
all existed before capitalism

clerks paperwork
enlightened meritocracy
all existed before the state

but they wuv each other
so much

bureaucracy being
the mechanization of human society
paperwork being programming

even our justice system
just answer yes or no
boils down to binaries
two privileged storytellers
an official judge appointed
by the state
and a gallery of spectators

all that paperwork
contorting details
to fit in the box
called justice

never forget
especially as you sit in a meeting
a political meeting a work meeting
a public meeting
that death by committee
is an old old thing

and that the terror
hinged on a group calling itself
the committee of public safety

le comite de salut public
safety & health
the same reasons they shut down
occupy

yours for the revolution
forbidden books