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Mar
25
No copyright
I don’t know why so few have seemed to discuss this topic, but I wish to write about the power of nonviolence in a way that ought to be brought up before everyone appears to assume the worst is “the only way”<strong> thru our building difficulties. Not pacifist nonviolence, but “confrontational” nonviolence!!</strong> First of all, I think of two powerful examples: One, Saul Alinsky and his “Back of the yards” groupings, and two, my own first-hand explorations and experiments (numbering over 20 actions in all, up to the present day). There’s also a third and fourth approach which I’ll get into later. Note that this is not a specific, “point by point” refutation of Gelderloos, but a more general response, inviting “trying it on” and dialog (with your affinity group, especially).
The Back of the Yards
Worth exploring probably the most is Alinsky’s methodology of confrontational nonviolence. Where he goes “outside the experience” of whom the creative action is directed at, and yet “inside the experience” of those doing the action. In his book Rules For Radicals, what I read led me to the idea that Alinsky’s main approach seems to be about challenging stereotypes (i.e. in racism) –by going to the absurd extreme of them.
So imagine, a group of maybe a hundred Black folk converging all at once into a march, and they’re all carrying and eating watermelons (to “mess with” that old stereotype). Let’s not forget, Alinsky was carrying out his actions in the 1940s to the 1960s, when those stereotypes were still “in effect.” Another, especially exquisite tactic was deployed in an enclosed space, where a large group ate loads of “the fruit that makes ya toot.” Rendering the staid into a form of chaos that, at that time, would only “be laughed out of the court!” (Surely the severely alienated ideologues of statecraft have out-flanked THAT by now, right? I don’t know, do you?)
Alinsky had a lot of successes too, and was regularly visiting the towns of Rochester, NY and Chicago to growing and growing numbers of people. Granted, Alinsky was a known as a Religionist (a very naughty man for being a product of his time) and so on, and thus all the superficially-challenged (?) judgers (like so many–but not all–holier-than-thou anarchists). Myself i don’t give a fuck whether he was “a perfect person” or “a bit to ideological”, or whatever; it’s his creative direct actions that move me to include him!
Putting my own life on the line
On the other hand, there are the tactics I’ve been exploring and putting my life on the line for. Together with “arting myself” (i.e. getting in touch with my decolonial spirit connections) and the timing context, i’ve found miraculous openings that seem to have remain untried by most. The main angle was/is about surprise, and the second angle is to have something “REALLY LARGE” to speak; large enough that it surprises the intellects of likely many, and titillates them, causing them to more readily remember the messages!
This tactic has proven effective not only to actually get messages across to people, but also <em>to shake them to their core</em> (i think) –when they read the messages we passed out. Particularly on the more ….uh…. “controversial” subjects; where one is happiest to have survived the action in the context of a heavily propagandized populace. So, in “washington, d.c.” when i marched solo and autonomously, winding and wending all thru-out the 1993 “gay pride” march, a ten-foot-sized loudspeaker tied onto my backpack frame, with “ghost regalia” draped over, and my quite amplified voice “haunting” the scapegoating, assimilationist beliefs of the well-funded side of the homophile (“gay”) community (As “the voice” of “dude-loving spirits past”; and the assimilationist gay masses didn’t know how to think about it at that time, and could not, to most extents, react as they had been programmed!
No one had instructed them, at that time. A key thing!
nonviolent confrontation in minnesota
Similarly, in 1995, i and one other brave soul marched again (without a permit), in minneapolis, mn, <strong>this time yelling orgasm cries</strong> and chants, and passing out a Hakim Bey-style “poetic terror” flyer (full of “depth-charge” consciousness that that population, also, had been steered clear of and Taught What to Believe). <strong>As people GUFFAWED, they eagerly took our wradical’s wradical (heh) flyer, only to read it more closely later, and be truly blasted, metaphorically!</strong>
We not only somehow stayed just ahead of the notoriously violent minneapolis police, even tho one (and only one, the entire parade route!) parade martial went hysterical on us, screaming at us to leave, we remained, most of the time, in a weird kind of “deja vu” safe space; all due to the power of creative, confrontational nonviolence!
Later, leaving that outdoor arena, a truly confused person seemed to HAVE TO justify her bigotry and Tell me that I “Must Be A Republican”; obviously she could not think beyond that superficial box when someone dared challenge her confined thought!
In all honesty, I don’t see myself as “Right or Left” (to me this dichotomous think is an out-moded, obsolete approximation that needs to get deconstructed and overhauled, towards, you guessed it, wradical’s wradical empathy and COMMONALITY! (Not allowing anyone to basically trample anyone, and yet listening ‘behind’ the reflections emanating thru off-balanced people, and inviting them to mutually design processes towards their and our excellences! …To be partied on about, later if and when people are able to make a “poetic bridge”!)
All using “power of now” creativity and consciousness.
The final approaches (two) that I think are well worth mentioning are, one, the tactics of the “shanti sena” (apparently the people’s–informal–police) of the “Rainbow Gathering”, and two, the validity of using our “rights” even when we are told that they are no longer valid (and even, as anarchists or what-have-you, we don’t truly identify with them).
Firstly, the Rainbow “shanti sena”:
Since 1972, this quite anarchic, autonomous group has weathered all kinds of over and covert intervention by local and federal police. They have developed all kinds of responses, from chaos numbers suddenly coming out of the woods when FS cops tried to bring assault weapons into the gathering (see 2006 video on youtube), and backing them down, to how the people’s police, a.k.a. the shanti sena are quite capable of blocking and then comforting large, flailing, drunken (or drugged-out) men. Basically, a large crowd suddenly forming which takes hold of the flailer in a firm but easy way, putting him on the ground, and then carressing him and talking soothingly to him, until he calms down!
Our ‘rights’, how to use
Now, and finally, using our “rights”; <strong>(even if you’re an anarchist, and are against “rights”, you can still use this tactic, I think. But first you need to (?) escape (?) the confines of ideologically-challenged rigidity!)</strong> The ACLU has reported that “we” no longer <em>”have”</em> any Constitutional rights, due to the facts of covert police/federal agents breaking into activists homes (and etcetera), and disregarding the so-called “Rule of Law” whenever it suits them. (Let’s talk Treaty Law and local Indigenous folks and realize that there NEVER WAS ANY REAL “Rule of Law”! And that we only had such because we were privileged settlers!) And yet, still, I’ve personally seen that “sticking by your rights” when challenged, can prove pivotal.
As one who’s never even been arrested (in my almost 30 years of solidarity work), that’s saying something, don’t you think?!
So, you have the “right” to “remain silent” and say ‘no’ to all searches, for example. The basic angle of this is you force individual cops to choose for themselves whether they want to follow their sworn allegiance to the Constitution.
The ACLU “bustcard” doesn’t say this (for some crazy reason!), but from my experiences, the best way to deliver your “rights” is by not addressing the cop directly; but rather talk in generalities. I.e. Don’t say “I don’t want YOU to search me.” Say instead, “Im saying ‘no’ to any search.” In this way, you can more possibly avoid the classic ways in which cops are treated by their so-called “superiors” and the culture that surrounds them, often quite bureaucratic-ly and anti-human, whereupon they sometimes feel like they HAVE TO scapegoat someone in order to Let Off their pent-up Steam. And if you’re being an ass to them and not adequately thinking that through, you run more of a risk of them “flying off the handle.”
Sure, there’s no sure-fire rule, since most cops today seem to be able to act with impunity. But, like I said, in almost 30 years of solidarity work, i’ve never even been arrested (to the eternal surprise of quite a few cops seemingly deployed at me). That is probably statistically likely to change, and become a sort of “right of passage” I suppose, but for now, I’m surprised and elated.
To conclude, the power that i speak of in confrontational nonviolence is more about timing and smaller groups engaging situations in a “surprise” way. Larger groups may be able to use these tactics, but my expertise is in small groups. Notalby, there is no “pacifism” here! Depending on how deep your creativity and imagination is, i think we can all find openings that we’ve tended to believe “weren’t there” (mostly due, i suspect, to the propaganda of violence).
Some resources
The u.s. Rainbow Gahtering (see also: International gatherings) : http://www.welcomehome.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky
ACLU claims that we have no rights is a recollection I have posted on the ACLU’s email list. Sorry, couldn’t find the actual article.
Additional links on the topic:
https://visionary4evolution.wordpress.com/2018/01/15/the-power-of-confrontational-nonviolence/
(a less deep commentary)
and
https://visionary4evolution.wordpress.com/2018/02/01/2017-orygone-rainbow-gathering-comments-on-agros-etc/
(on the topic of Rainbow ‘agros’ and their meta gifts)
and
https://visionary4evolution.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/worth-thinking-through-smash-pacifism-critique-of-nonviolent-tacts/
and
https://visionary4evolution.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/angles-on-jump-starting-our-creative-nonviolent-intelligence/
<strong>
and last, but not least, the seminal (?) <i>”Good Peasant, Bad Peasant”</i> (informal nonviolence by whole ‘hoods, to use when police are not acting professionally) :</strong>
https://visionary4evolution.wordpress.com/2007/11/16/good-peasant-bad-peasant-some-ideas-for-interacting-with-tyranny/
Feb
02
via Defining and Invigorating Scottish Gaelic Identity in the Modern World
Really like the author’s ideas on this one, escaping the trap of nationalist and reductionist identities and embracing hybrid approaches to our ancient ancestral power abilities!
Feb
01
Am finally “getting to” putting this up where it should have been about 6 months ago! At that time I was having trouble even logging in to this blog, and so a friend was kind enough to post it on their blog for me in the meanwhile! ( link to unsettling subtle settler unsettlers blog )
The apparent reality of humanity’s grimish predicament was brought home to me, recently, when I attended, via deep spiritual challenge trajectory, this year’s national Rainbow Gathering in a mountain range near the settler town of John Day, Orygone.
To begin with, I heard lots of peace-oriented folks complain about ‘the problem’ of “the agros” (a.k.a. “dirty kids”, etcetera), and how THEY didn’t seem to have a clue about how to “stop” the problem of people unsettling their liberal asses in ways that did seem “a little” overboard, even by this streetwise unhoused person. Secondly, the numbers of attendees seemed way way down for a project as long-running as the Rainbow Gathering, as back only ten years ago they used to have at least 20,000 attendees for the full week, while today, it seems that most come only for the 3rd-5th (of July) or thereabouts. While someone at info thought there were only 5,000 attendees this year.
So what is going down, do you think?
A lot of people pointed to “the dirty kids”, a.k.a. Gutter Punks, and their ilk (heh) as being the reason for the apparent mass exodus away from Rainbow Gatherings. Perhaps those who own the political police know better, and we’ll find out in a future FOIA file. Perhaps these owners of the political police decided that someone had to “up the ante” against a pretty strong community of people that has been able to survive all sorts of bullshit from the feds and local cops for the last 40-some years??
After all, the Rollback dictum (since around 1975) pushes all political police to not allow meaningful community to even germinate, much less bloom, seeking to block such challenge to the status quo before it can even gather momentum. (source: see the intro to Necessary Illusions, by Noam Chomsky, where he spells this out.)
Perhaps certain privileges have been allowed since most of the attendees have been kept (?) to remain mostly white folks (i.e. not to just come in and arrest everyone, as I thought might happen in the context of a trump whitehouse, especially). What with the latest evolution of successful respectful practices between Rainbows and a Burns, OR area Indigenous nation, this would likely be “too much”, and the political police HAD to “raise the stakes” even more than usual? Except this time, more covertly??
So on the one hand, yes, it does seem like the political police, the new COINTELpro, the truly fooled and tooled, have “gained” a foothold and are finally “effectively” fucking with the peace-seeking visionaries of the Rainbow project.
On the other hand, I do not know for sure what is REALLY happening! (HEY!) So the following is merely my feelings, my intuition, my praxis, and the reality that I’ve been “around the block” a few times (including being a “vet” of a few national and regional gatherings and Rainbow community since 1991, off and on). So I compare the patterns of political-police-seeming activities deployed my way before attending the gathering with my experiences (and others’) during the gathering.
Meeting my fellow strategically-challenged head-on
I might have been smarter to have met these folks intellectually (“head-on”), but my intuitive spiritual path led me firmly in the direction of observation ..and listening (but not responding –While at the same time, responding when i felt it crucial, such as when i have mobilized to take on an especially difficult situations that could turn into what a political cop may seek). ….A kind of passivity and yet not! After all, those who know, know that just my mere presence has a way of sending shock waves to those who tried so hard to intimidate me and others from even going at all! So I met their eyes, but I refused to play into their “playful” and not-so-playful provocations. Going with OTHER ways to approach, instead!
Making sense to you?
Were ALL the detractors and “agros” politicized police/feds/ corporate agents?
Or were they a mix of formal (with a job to do) and informal (uncomprehending) agents –say sex offenders sufficiently maligned so that they would take what jobs they could get–regardless of the bigger picture consequences??
Or…perhaps even more insightfully, a mix of the usual covert actors working to “drive a wedge” between and exploit all differences, with a mix of folks with very real symptoms emanating from very real insanities due to experiences in the institutions of Alienation, Inc.?
Granted, I had entered into this year’s Rainbow community with intrigue surrounding me. Right from the start, when I first made contact with Orygone folks, I let it be known that I am a “constroversial” figure, but I didn’t explain further. One Rainbow elder took me in previously for over a month without knowing much more than that I was homeless and seemed amiable enough. We got to know each other pretty good, but my carefully shared secret got the best of him in the end, I think, and he kicked me out on a misunderstanding, perhaps tired of my “beating around the bush” and not (yet) just saying “it”.
Well, I did tell him of the (“devoutly normal”) society as very much like a Nazi/fascist society, and in that context have to be very careful who I come OUT to…. So I ended up not coming OUT to him truly, but touching on the subject with someone else, instead.
And then I took that mystique with me, going so far as to approach Info/Rumor control camp at the gathering with the truth that I am a walking rumor….and then to please ask ME before assuming anything. I never fully explained, but I don’t think I had to (anyway, everyone seemed to learn of my notoriety soon enough –and such does follow me everywhere I go, I find). Notably, I remain within the law on the most pointed parts of this truth (that could get me put away for life), while choosing to try to speak “nonsilently” for sides of truth that are being rendered nonexistent/forgotten, in the ongoing pogrom to wipe people’s memory of the value of informal intergenerational solidarity.
So, yeah, I was already a target, and I knew it. And I also know that to have tried to speak about it at the Gathering was not only strategically foolish but would play into the hands of those who seek to finally crush the Rainbow Gathering spirit. So despite a few provocations, I remained mum. In other ways, such as around my visionary ideas, I spoke freely, yes, and that made all the rest of the bullshit quite worthwhile.
Psychological difficulties of agro-stuck folks?
Granted, as I touched on above, way-out-of-balance psychological difficulties also have curiously been allowed to run more and more rampant –most notably, i think, around dissident communities or in the down-towns of cities– apparently without meaningful response. A certainly exploited “crack” that the Left, for one, has been incapable of truly addressing, besides doing the work of capital/neocolonialism by going along with the social scientists among them!
For example, if one decides not to trust (or is a survivor of) bio psychiatry, who can they turn to? It seems like groups like Eugene, Orygn’s own www.mindfreedom.org (once publisher of the thriving “Dendron” zine) have been successfully maligned, into merely scholarly approaches these days…Oh, there’s the amazing CAHOOTS project (which apparently acts as an informalish 1st-responder group before the cops are called, for street-type issues, see: http://whitebirdclinic.org/cahoots/ ); and my understanding is that they do not force people into the biomedical psychiatric model…instead working to truly (?) help in other ways, which are more in line with being a human being with each other.
So what happens? You got more and more people dealing with their difficulties in living via self-taught ways of doing things, or within the confines of the neocolonial social sciences. ….Surrounded by more and more people who are being taught to ignore them at all costs, not seeing the folly of it all.
So, at the Rainbow Gathering, all of this coming “to a head”, where liberal-types (superficially-challenged peace-wagers) get a taste of the truth –that “the crazies” WILL NOT “go silently” –as the Middle Class meta rule pushes for. At Rainbow, at least, they have a chance to get up in the restrictive-protection-oriented liberals’ face!
Of course, to reiterate, the political police certainly seek to exploit this difficulty, and you know they must be deploying some of these victims of institutional realities, a.k.a. “the crazies”, in varying ways (even if that’s just rounding a bunch of angry inarticulates up from a large city and covertly bringing them to the gathering and setting them loose.
So to me this state of affairs has an invitation in it that we would not normally see when not at a gathering. The invitation is to really get to work/play on creatively intelligent ways we may respond, instead of being lazy in our thinking, and merely labeling THEM with continuances of the character assassination game.
One Rainbow participant thought that having the gathering last a month might be one approach; because it’s hard to create truly viable alternatives in only the span of a week. Sounds interesting to me!
Also, the late Indigenous champion, John Trudell, really put it in the heart with this: “In the reality of many realities, how we see what we see affects the quality of our reality.”
Think about how most alleged peace-wagers will react to all of this challenge.
More and more they will seek “closed doors” and higher and higher expenses (gate-keeper prices) in order to keep off-balance intensities OUT. This is “protection via restrictive” means. They will believe they are protecting themselves, but not see that that tactic only seems to work when force is held in reserve.
On the other hand, the Rainbow gift-way teaches me that its heart is more about “protection via mutualist strategies of enrichment” instead of restriction.
I think this approach makes much more sense, because of the possibilities that accrue in the context of more human, more authentic, non-adversarial/non-dichtomous responses.
Non-adversarial-style responses such as seeing “the crazies” as proverbial “Little Johns” blocking the way of “Robin Hood” as he attempts to cross the bridge in the classic european story. And if we engage in a little physicality (because, in the reality of how people have been made as dumbed-down as possible, some people just DO NOT trust anything except such!).
With such “Little John”-type approaches, we may well find a whole lot of sanity just underneath all the crazy cammo!
What do you think?
So i think that the challenge then becomes:
With whose ability do we respond? Social science-stuck values that come with our Rollback programming (post-1970s, pretty much ALL got that!), or a more anti-authoritarian set of values?
Sample challengers
A) When out of seemingly nowhere (or was his HQ “Tea Time” camp?) a short guy sporting a nationalist leather jacket (reading “ENGLAND” on the back) approaches me a little too close-up while I hang out around Eugene Camp (after everyone else has taken down the camp). He is able to get “too close” via the cammo of appearing to be oriented to “NAMASTE” (which I’m not especially conscious of, but which he seemed to think I might be), only to whisper threats, and then knock me with his fist right on my chest. I took it unwaveringly (i think to his possible surprise), and as he walked away, I yelled at him that such would not stop me from getting into the middle of fights in the future (which I have a semi-suicidal tendency to do, I find, over and over). Thus I responded in non-sequitor to his non-sequitor (or at least it seemed to me).
(Notably, he apparently did this type of action towards various people, as one person told me of something like that happening to him, and another said that the Tea Time camp guy was “mean”; the context, the Tea Time camp folks blasting various horns thru-out the night, every night, in an apparent intention to keep all the peace-niks and their families (?) as off-balance as possible, and possibly “see their true colors” more readily…?)
B) Meanwhile, on another side of camp, closer to Tipi Village, some “mean woman” (said one female observer) in the Montana Mud kitchen vicinity apparently worked overtime to yell obscenities and be all kinds of agro thru-out the night, much to the chagrin of peace-niks and their families over there.
And yet, on the morning of July 4, right up to noon, there was STILL an amazing quiet just like the Rainbow focalizers sought, and even the OM went off pretty well (tho I would like to help focalize at least one inner circle organized so to enhance the sound of the inner circle together with the outer circle!).
So, the gathering felt like a mystery and maybe a mystery more magick’L than the middle-class-values-planted in ME wants to egoicly admit!
Magick’Ly wradical’s wradical even, in the case of what one elder holding space at Tipi Village told me about “the madhouse” of the nextdoor neighbors’ heavy drinking and such loud carrying on.
Unsettling the peace-niks among them, for sure.
What can we possibly learn from all of this? Well, for one thing, I think more and more people are lacking solidarity experiences in their lives. And another thing, more and more people are being duped into not seeing “crazy behavior” (a.k.a. unreasonable) in its quite sane/reasonable context. “Symptoms” are not our enemies, they are our friends as the late great, R.D.Laing posited (promoting the idea to HELP FACILITATE nuts TO GO ON THEIR JOURNEYS OF DISCOVERY!).
To allow free expression of symptoms is a good thing, even tho it smashes up against the Liberal ideal of “a peaceful camping adventure”.
Perpetuating rigid dichotomies only perpetuates rigid dichotomies! No matter who is most “reasonably” labeled and reduced!
This brings up something I’ve been wanting to share for awhile:
Even when such symptoms are perpetuated by folks we assume are Only Oppressive (i.e. covert actors tooled by the State), how do we KNOW that such oppressors are not still oppressed (even as they oppress)—by their mindset and belief systems?! The mindset that gets forcefully passed ‘down’ to even them! And which they still uncritically Believe in, amongst all others, even as they foolishly work to undermine bigger picture THEIR OWN INTERESTS!!!
NOTE: We do NOT allow people to crush or trample others, and yet we ALLOW for symptom-exploring and consciousness-raising efforts and ancient solidarity villager recovery!
And this reminds me of the “Good Peasant, Bad Peasant” style –and beyond (source: https://visionaryhumanity.wordpress.com/2007/11/16/good-peasant-bad-peasant-some-ideas-for-interacting-with-tyranny/ )!
Up to our dared imagination, I think!
If this isn’t clear enough for you, that’s your problem. If you can get something out of this, that is my intent.
The bottom line for me in writing this up is to promote that anti-authoritarians realize the value of exploring the daunting challenges being visited on such a long-running anti-authoritarian visionary project like the Rainbow Gatherings (since 1972!).
To conclude, given the vibrancy of the Rainbow spirit, I cannot help but to wonder if all of this controversy isn’t in fact a “grand illusion” or “movie” (the latter used by Rainbow folks in a way I have yet to fully grasp, I think!) that is meant not only to reach caring people’s hearts, but also force them/us to think deeper than we’re programmed to think!
I can certainly imagine some kind of meta construct like this, especially amongst such long-time stoners!! Getting us to think that they are about to be crushed, as a device (?) to inspire Rainbow newbies (and other somewhat clueless folk like me, heh) to put in their better best!!!!
Well, it is possible!
In this “yank and splash” (yanking our proverbial necktie/leashes, and splashing us with the ice cold water of reality not bullshit) routine (?), we are CHALLENGED in serious ways to PROVE our peace mettle, our alleged GREAT visions!!
Imagine this: Folks like “agros” and other survivor champions of hard-core are sick and tired of bullshit peace so they’re veritably “calling out” all the alleged bliss and testing it!!!!
Programmed in soldier-ese, they’re on the one hand being duped to out-fight an entity (i.e. Alienation, Inc.) that has perfected that kind of stupidity and similar Misery Loves Company, while at the same time, following their GUT INSTINCT to challenge ‘the liberals’ with something they think is MORE REAL and MEANINGFUL! (even tho physicality is only a part of the process!)
I say, hear out John Trudell where he speaks of out-thinking those, whom “in their legions, do not have permission to think (only to follow orders),” and how this state of affairs “starts to even out the numbers.”
Grand “movie” illusion or not, any would-be visionary or budding (r)evolutionary, if they’re “Worth Their Salt” should very much experience AT LEAST ONE Rainbow Gathering national in their lifetimes!! And if you go armed with serious consciousness, you’ll be that much more capable of finding mutually liberating solutions bringing sure gifts not only to an apparently besieged visionary community, but to yourselves as well!
Jan
31
My side/understanding is that “radical” means “to go to the root”. To then be a “radical’s radical” is to go “to the root” of the root! Or “the” HEART. Thus, in terms of institutional analysis or articulating “resistance consciousness” the idea is to go deeper than the quite easily obtainable ideologically- and strategically-challenged (i.e. in terms of severely-alienated settler normative beliefs/imprinting) found in myriad online today. Even amongst, apparently, many anti-authoritarians (how could it not be so?)!
Of course, like other strongheart, liberating-oriented words, the word “radical” is being character assassinated, and turned on its head by “those who are doing their jobs for the fun of it” (N. Chomsky). Also known as the severely alienated “who know not what they do” (attributed to that one guy who hasn’t returned as humanity’s savior for over 2000 years now, but many people find him crucial).
The psychicly and psychologically-beaten believers in Machiavellianism and in “elite” (but truly superficial material privilege) absolutes (i.e. about how “the masses” are stupid, instead of stupid-ized for strategic reasons), we realize, do as they do because they KNOW no other way. And no one has aided them, meaningfully, beyond the ideological and psychological traps that they find themselves in!
Basically, Misery Loves Company has forgotten the power and value of EMPATHY LOVES COMPANY being more inspiring than Misery Loves Company!
Need i say more?
Jan
15
The following comes from one of my other visionary websites, and is shared in order to possibly inspire other creative people who might DARE to “art themselves” deeper than expected. Note that this tact is not “pacifist” nonviolence; i insist that there should be a distinction between the two: pacifist vs non-pacifist/confrontational (not going silently). These were all actions i carried out in the early 2000’s. i carried out even “more radical” actions in the 1990s, but for now, i’ll only be sharing these. (some editing done for clarity)
NOTE: aLL OF this art and regalia was/is NOT copied from Indigenous culture “per se”, but is a product of many days (and sometimes years) of thought, reflection, and personal spirituality. Certainly INSPIRED BY various Indigenous peoples on different parts of moM EartH, and yet not, i think, treading upon Indigenous traditions directly (except perhaps in joining them in a neo-human-being way).
A few years back…
Grand Rapids, Michigan, a normally quite dismal Michigan city of maybe 300,000 where truly liberatory ideas have long been driven underground, alternative media blocked, and public access to ideas beyond the religious and corporate networks highly controlled (1). So it was that a lone “crucial artist” dared beyond conditioned fears to hike *THREE different times* in this city in order to seed, spread, and blaze a trail of the kind of creativity and excellence that only a handful of [critical thinkers] seem capable of comprehending the value of, so far (outside of traditional Indigenous communities, anyways). Possibly in the tradition of the African griot, the Native American cocapelli or Heyoka, the christian prophet Johnny Appleseed, or even eccentric street interactors like Grandpa Woodstock (of Rainbow Gathering fame), this half-crazed “weirdo champion” art-doer has worked overtime, through more than twelve cities and towns and other communities across the u.s.a. to get his quite provocative statements out [and to possibly inspire other creative nuts to take their art out of the corrals and walls of the Devoutly Normal, and INTO THE STREETS]!
The first action spanned more than six hours and a walking distance of at least 12 miles! The second, a few weeks later, for about 4 hours on the last day of the city’s annual 3-day “Arts Festival” downtown. The third, a week after that, of a total distance of about 7 walking miles, with a main focus on the annual “Three Fires Pow Wow” held at Riverside Park.
intro to general method and style My art/arting consisted of decking myself out in a kind of mobile spectacle that promised to not only catch attention, but as well “trip out” people because they would have little or no preconceived idea of what i was up to; thus, reading my signs, seeking clues, only to let the depth of those messages into their usually well-armored social psyches (see sign text below).
My clothing is an independently designed, WILDish, “phancy dance” outfit i call my regalia [and] is the principle part of my mobile spectacle (here i use ‘spectacle’ as a tool to enhance my depth messages, not as an ends to reduce depth as mainline spectacle so often does). It is made up of two main styles centered around a hand-made mask/masque which is very tripped-out in appearance, right down to the style of eyes i came up with via spiritual artseeking over many years–originally inspired by Tlingit/Kwakiutl/Haida art of the NW Coast, and added to [in my own way]. The latest incarnation of this masque (the first one was stolen by an acquaintance) is of what i call a “Moofiecoyote-wolfdog” spirit (which is a spiritual tribute to several dogpeople, including a half-coyote/half-pomeranian (!) dog–named Moofie–who once healed my Eczema; and a wild wolf i met in AZ who i called Beautiful Friend after getting to know her over 6 days).
(….)
speakin and sharing
My mobile arting also consists of how i interact with the public, both by daring “abnormal” ways of speaking, and passing out “depth charge” [info] flyers to all who dare not flee or put up armor and ignore me (see the entire depth charge flyer below). As well, i carry or wear multiple day-glo signs of many sizes and shapes with phrases like:
“WE ARE KEPT HYPED-UP AND DIVIDED AGAINST EACH OTHER–Realize the value of reaching out to those you fear”(shared partially at Pow Wow)
“REALIZE THE VALUE OF BEING RADICALLY BEAUTIFUL WITH EACH OTHER”
“DARE TO ART YOUR HEART” (not shared at Pow Wow)
“DARE TO PRESERVE YOUR WILD DEPTH–Dare to see this as your very own ticket to Loving Living” (not shared at Pow Wow)
shared more privately, but not at the Pow Wow:
“WAR AT HOME & ABROAD IS PERPETUATED BY WAR SYSTEMS INCULCATING ALL YOUNG INTO A PLETHORA OF WAR MINDSETS”
Shared only before, during, and after Pow Wow action:
“OUR FEAR, OUR LIVES, IT ALL WORKS ON HOW WE BELIEVE”–quote by John Trudell
“DEACTIVATE THE EXTERNAL PREDATOR ENERGY THRU OUR PERCEPTION OF IT WITHIN OUR OWN MIND-SET“–another Trudell quote
And, under an art piece that was “all lines”: “TO COLLABORATE WITH THOSE WHO DARE. TO INSPIRE EACH OTHER! ANYWAY, i WILL STILL LEARN FROM YOUR REFLECTION”
Finally: “THOUGHT CONTROL IS TO SOCIETY WHAT VIOLENCE IS TO TYRANNY” (basically a Chomsky quote, deepened)
Also strategically passed out at least twenty copies of an article about post-Left anarchy, by Jason McQuinn (didn’t pass this out during the Pow Wow action tho).
Prancing and strolling, defying categorical-isms and expec-tations, passing out my depth charge flyers, jiu-jitsuing the spectacle to most --"What, you're really not selling anything?" --"What, you're REALLY not some religious fundamentalist?" --"What, you're really not representing some fishy organization?"
Hot out, so my walk becomes like “a Sweat”. A mobile *Sweat Lodge* of sorts; doing “The Sweat of Everyday Life” with [my intuitive, tho limited idea of] Indigenous imagination mixed together with the gist of Raoul Vaneigem’s “The Revolution of Everyday Life”.
Not seeking mediated mention in mainscream war “News” (“the (r)evolution will not be televised”); i make it a point to avoid and not cooperate with professional mediators ([whom seek] to reduce depth to a set of value assumptions called “a story”), if i can help it. Preferring to escape that paradigm as much as i feel [is] possible, and let it ferment independently, either completely informally or in the [Indymedia] project (i.e. chicago.indymedia.org).
Not merely creating yet “new” empty spectacle for “consumer” “entertainment” addictions, but a spontaneous form of *crucial arting* and *seeding* with depth articulation processing and excellence rarely experienced by the heavily mediated Public imagi-nation! Beyond the commodified pastures of Art Gallerydom and Sales Pitch Land or gimmick routines up the yin-yang! Beyond such Everyday War, into something i call
*Everyday Or* towards at least erstwhile SOAR and to CORES of bore and poor [via] ju-jitsu! WILDLY arting oneself as a way to Love Living on this planet!!!!
As a way to seed or facilitate our desperately impoverished DESIRES and waning visions, beyond the death-grip of death cult-ure and perpetual "Us vs. Them-isms"!
Arting oneself as a way towards fear-mindset EVOLVING, not revolving; as a way to even inspire possible spiritual figures--like the alleged christ(s)--to allegedly return, and dare their alleged greatness again!!
i, dis charisma who avoids followers, the mainscream media, and formalities, preferring fellow champions, and learning from the lessons history can teach; not cooperating, not seeking "fame" on the same old war beachheads, nor reducing myself to identities and ideology
yet still remaining hue-man/human--daring towards excellent beautifulness --what would that be like????
dressed untamedly, so S T R A N G E L Y, doin my art(e) babe-ee! Reflecting the depth reflected in my daring to mix a broad magix of depth cultures--American indigenous, African, maybe Euro, and Eolithic (a time being realized as yOu dare beyondGiven/spoonfed coercions of 'Is' cult-ure and into a truly becoming process of perfectly imperfect iz)!
Images below, include photos from other actions you can see at the site below
Read the full ‘report’:
http://www.angelfire.com/folk/magixnartz/gractions.html
Check out a bunch of reports from my visionary work over the years:
Jan
13
Letter in solidarity with the anti-sexual-violence community
Dear concerned,
I’m a survivor (so far) of “suiciety” abuse. That is, “suicidal society.” Where a strategically-challenged public is fooled into attacking not the REAL difficulties and challenges facing them, but fellow vulnerable and scapegoated people.
I think you all “get it” up to here. What I suspect (and thus write this letter), is that your critique is not as DEEP as you might believe it is. That is, those you readily identify as being victims of sexual violence are likely superficial in the context of neocolonial realities. In this letter, I seek to better inform you, or even possibly surprise you, so that you may broaden your resistance consciousness on crucial topics like I think this is.
First of all, I think we need to understand the ideology of “suiciety”. If you look up Noam Chomsky’s institutional analysis of what are called “social and cultural managers” (1) and how they (as well as those who own them in turn) act to stupidize (and keep stupidized) we masses, you get one view. If you read “The Prince” by Machiavelli or Walter Lippmann’s “Public Opinion“, you get something that kind of buttresses Chomsky’s analysis. Basically, those who see themselves as “The More Capable” members of suiciety want to keep we, “the masses” “managed”, not “catching on” too meaningfully because if we do, they believe, we will “run amok” and “destroy” all that the materially-challenged have set up for themselves. You explore Chomsky, and you gain that awareness.
Then there’s the ancient evolutionary excellence that human beings have been honing and building on for thousands of years more than this relatively recent phenomenon (which I think stems from one “tribe” –of martially-stuck believers– getting away from true balance for various reasons, discovering the “technique” of social control and “getting away with” this state of affairs for the last 3000 or so years, more and more). On the other hand, the much more ancient evolutionary excellence I’m speaking of has so far been able to hold onto its true-balance methodologies (in secret when forced), and thus realizes the value of hearing ALL inputs, all voices, in meaningful ways; ways that inspire continual meaningful participation in solidarity and its end, community!
This is an excellence that I put my life on the line to speak up with and lay down my life for. It is the solidarity of realizing the value of SHARING POWER WITH the greatly-spirit’d organic-oriented human beings –especially the younger set! –Before they are fully “psychologically-genocided” and rendered into groan-up lockstep-mind-set.
Basically, the many-leveled solidarity I speak of, is focused around organicly-human, informal ways of being in and seeing (and opposed to the domination of artificial, or professionally-mediated) relations. Where authentic bonding and intuitive connection-seeking is side- (and under-) stood to be having beautiful value both in the short and long-run.
Thus, not with the intent to perpetuate “Us V Them” stupidity! Nor to perpetuate rigidized hierarchies (stuck in FEAR)!
Professional “experts” and their implementers can still have a place, but they are not allowed to manipulate and dupe people with their Newspeak, their Public Relations games, and their propaganda techniques! (How are they stopped? That is a subject for another article, but for now I will just say, they are stopped by the level of awareness that the critically-thinking can bring to people’s attention. They are stopped by meaningful community, where the severely alienated are not forced somewhere else, away from everyone –or killed, but are surprised and challenged ideologically via systematic demystification of the ways in which they are themselves taught to believe in and internalize the alleged values of severe alienation!
How this is relevant to the anti-sexual-violence community is in how these forces of what I call “Alienation, Inc.” (a division of Misery Loves Company) affect us without most of us truly catching on. How we get mesmerized into believing that some coercive institutions are valid and allegedly “needed”, while others, depending on your “Left” or “Right-wing” view, are NOT. How “shell games” are played against us all, and so-called “progress” a dubious reality.
How, for instance, one aspect of Alienation, Inc., unaccountable psychiatrists, have cammoflauged themselves within the auspices of “Rollback” (Chomsky’s speech “Media Control“–now a book– on this broader program of statecraft, to render “the rabble” “Back” into their “Proper Place” as uncritically subordinated, is crucial!). And have been given privileges so to not only appear so-called “objective” and “helpful” to the public (when few others are allowed), but allowed “the legitimacy” to access ways in which to address mass numbers. (2)
Dr.Thomas Szasz, himself a psychiatrist, and a leading voice in abolishing coercive psychiatry since the 1950s, was right when he called psychiatry the “new religion.” (3) Complete with the ability to threaten to use state-force to back up its pronouncements (i.e. You Better take your meds, or Else), and the ability to call its coercions so-called “community” (while going along with the program that doesn’t allow the public to HAVE autonomously-strong communities) it is given “The Right” to define who we are, and use all kinds of pressures to get us to uncritically conform. In that not-comprehended context, believers think that the professional mediators “care” about them, and that that form of “community” is ALL THAT IS REALISTICALLY POSSIBLE!
Thus believers are stupidized, and kept so!
The half-assed response from these professional so-called “Do-Gooders”? “Got to Feed Our Kids some way!”
All of this in a social background that institutional analysts across the spectrum of whistle-blowing agree is Orwellian to the max. (4)
Seeing such, some of us who find ourselves being CRUSHED UNDER THE WEIGHT OF THE ROLLBACK propaganda MACHINE still seek to expose the truths as we know them, albeit not always as articulate as we could be, by whatever means we can imagine. Thus my “fool” attempt here.
Notes:
- See https://chomsky.info/search/?find=rollback
- Two notes, first, the best study I’ve seen on the rollback phenomenon is Chomsky’s Media Control, published by South End Press, Boston. I can also try to send you the full text, since I got Chomsky’s permission to post it on one of my webpages a few years back (a website now hacked and out of my control, but still having that page on it). Secondly, check out the realities of how the social sciences like psychiatry are kept on “a short leash” when “it truly counts” by looking up a hard-copy of the American Psychological Association’s peer-reviewed journal, The Psychological Bulletin, 1998 (wikipedia has some info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rind_et_al._controversy). It was Jesse Helms (the infamous congressional censor of that era) who later found out about this article (several years after it was published) –and then forcing the APA to back-pedal on, and re-conform to the over-arching political imperatives, or face losing its federal funding and becoming suddenly de-legitimized! Thomas Hubbard and Beert Verstraete, in their book Censoring Sex Research (2013) go into quite some detail on a topic if you like books to read more than the above wiki.
- Dr.Thomas Szasz wrote some excellent demystification on this topic in his book The Theology of Medicine. Other voices include madnessradio.net or http://www.stopshrinks.org (note that you may have to go thru google to even visit this website, as I find it is sometimes blocked when seeking to go to it directly, even from public university libraries!)
- Other whistleblowers that I find important around this topic include: Gerald Farson (In Birthrights), John Holt (see his “Freedom and Beyond” as well as the book Escape From Childhood), Jason McQuinn (in “As We See It”), John Taylor Gatto (for a history on related topics), and Paul Goodman. Noam Chomsky has also been known to agree that the “social sciences” are well-known to be not nearly as free of political tainting as the “hard sciences” (tho Paul Feyerabend, Michael Polanyi, Theodore Roszak, and Thomas Kuhn would probably disagree!).
Some resources:
http://www.decolonization.org (an Indigenous voice challenging neocolonialism in creative ways) More pointed challenge can be found at unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com
The Spectacular Achievements of Media Control by Chuck Dodson (covers some of the 1970s-early 90s -era of the sex hysteria aspect of the Rollback reality which Noam Chomsky so effectively demystifies in his own excellent “Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda”)
Feb
23
Okay, so this is all rough art, not finished. i’ve actually finished the art, cleared up all the roughage and such, and am selling it/bartering it to people locally. i’m open to trying that on the internet, as well, but for now, i’m just putting this stuff out there. Perhaps someone can be aided by this depth? Again, it is anti-copyright for noncommercial purposes. If you are not a u.s. citizen, that is okay, you can still use it freely in your non-commercial media or where-ever (i.e. put any of my art on a t-shirt –but not in commercial media– and sell it to survive! of course, i’d like some kinda kickback, someday….even if it’s in the next life!)
Hats off to humanity. And may we finally puzzle through all of these myriad traps we find ourselves stuck in. May we finally wake up to our stupidization. May we finally wake up that we do not solve problems/difficulties by projecting/reflecting our shit on others, who-ever they may be. May we wake up and remember the matriarchal excellence that is within each of us (“man” or not), and finally begin thinking THAT out and practicing the excellence of THAT.
)no, i’m not talking about authoritarian femi-fascism; femininity is not only One Way Of Doing Things, it is many many many. Gifts in myriad. We ALL have such gifts within us, that we have been taught to squelch.
Why are we taught to squelch this beautiful potential? Because many have CAREERS dedicated to the interests of Alienation,Inc. (a division of Misery Loves Company).
They simply know no better. Surrounded by “frames of reference” that simply do not include their HEART, people take the sheeple “Path of Least Resistance”. Surrounded by slaves (to this Way Of Doing Things), we go off the proverbial cliff in each of our privated-away realities. Consequences of not even trying to (much less practicing) challenge the perpetual war that this situation has been long becoming.
In the spokenwords of the passed-on champioN oF organiC humanitY, John Trudell:
“Watch out, child, watch out child, Babylon is Falling Down, Falling Down.”
Feb
15
A little “pet project” i was doing for awhile. Might start something bigger one of these days, along the lines this comix story touches on! Oh YEAH! “ARM YOUR DESIRES!” First story touches on “hunting haters” with a demystification g’uN! (art is anti-copyright, feel free to pass around globally!)
a fascist gets “shot” by The Demystification G’un and cannot help but to speak his truth!
Feb
15
Meet Electric Ed, a.k.a. “Eddie Haskell”, a libertarian musician of some repute. i did the art below for one of this elder man’s CDs but he never used it (as far as i know). He’s a real “low key” type of character, now in his 60s. i met him while living off-grid, freely, about 15 years back, and we’re still only “good acquaintances”. That’s okay with me, though.
So this shows one of his CD titles, “Defeating War”. i like even more the music from earlier CDs, especially “1491” and “Old Car”. You can check his music out (and help your local college radio station play it!?!) here: http://www.myspace.com/spiritdude4 . There, you can listen to about 4 songs of his, for free. He’d like to hear from you via email, but i don’t have it off-hand…so if there’s any interest, comment and i’ll see what i can do!
Ed has also authored some more challenging songs. One of them stands out, and it’s a bit politically-incorrect, or so it seems on the surface of the song “Bitch Goddess”. I think he’s trying to get behind the surfaces of What We Usually Think, tho, and calling the entire system “the bitch” that has “got us”. What do you think?
Lastly, Ed has ONE SONG on youtube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMGzF_Naj9Y
(wow, just under 200 views and ALREADY he has an ad…argh?)
Ed would like assistance from anyone who likes his stuff. That means, buying one of his $20 CDs or helping him get his stuff “out there” to a larger audience.
Prolific in various instruments, and having probably 40 years experience, at least, i like him best when he’s playing a Mandolin. Real fun, and has some depth, for sure!
