Monday, April 20, 2009
Celebrating The Progressive Magazine
Over a month ago, I was going to write a piece in praise of The Progressive magazine. Their 100th anniversary issue had come out and I was duly impressed by the contents sampling their entire 100 year history.
While I've been reading The Progressive off and on for my entire adult life, I really was not aware of the history of the magazine and its pretty consistent, ah, progressive editorial perspective.
For example, in 1925 they took a stand against the attempts to eradicate Indian/Native American culture through the boarding school system.
This got me to thinking about the role of truly left-of-center magazines in US culture. (I use the qualifier "truly" because I don't particularly count, say, The Nation or The Atlantic. Mags like those are examples of the very conventional establishment talking to itself and not significantly challenging the status quo.)
I look at the newsstands packed with lifestyle mags, entertainment and celebrity pablum, and I wonder why people are so easily distracted from the central issues in their lives. We seem so helpless and hopeless, acted upon rather than actors.
I try to remember that revolution is always an option.
You should too.
While I've been reading The Progressive off and on for my entire adult life, I really was not aware of the history of the magazine and its pretty consistent, ah, progressive editorial perspective.
For example, in 1925 they took a stand against the attempts to eradicate Indian/Native American culture through the boarding school system.
This got me to thinking about the role of truly left-of-center magazines in US culture. (I use the qualifier "truly" because I don't particularly count, say, The Nation or The Atlantic. Mags like those are examples of the very conventional establishment talking to itself and not significantly challenging the status quo.)
I look at the newsstands packed with lifestyle mags, entertainment and celebrity pablum, and I wonder why people are so easily distracted from the central issues in their lives. We seem so helpless and hopeless, acted upon rather than actors.
I try to remember that revolution is always an option.
You should too.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
25 Radical Ways to Change Society
On Politicoholic, I came across a post on 25 Ways to use your blog and social media to create change.
I was struck by the weakly Liberal tone of many of the suggestions. Perhaps it's just the self-congratulatory attitude of self-importance permeating it that annoys me. The whole list reeks of "Look at me! I'm making a big change in the world! And I'm telling you all about it!"
While educating people has value, it isn't the same as actually effecting change with sweat and physical action. Most blogs are the equivalent of parlor pontification.
I started to wonder what a more radical version might look like, a version that put more emphasis on doing things in the world rather than just blogging about doing things. So here is my first attempt at such a list. It's repetitious in places but it's intended to mirror the original list linked above. I just re-wrote each numbered point as I came to it. It's not perfect but it's mine.
1. Start simple: Steal from large corporations.
2. Join an activist group, a group that performs direct action.
3. Or if there isn't a group with politics or an activist philosophy you agree with, create your own. Form a small group of trusted people and collectively decide on goals and actions.
4. Videoblog an interview with someone with radical political views. Ask them about strategies to transform society.
5. Share a meal with a stranger, someone not like you.
6. Has someone you love been affected by class warfare or capitalism's indifference to individual suffering?? Share your story and raise awareness.
7. Demand change from government and corporations. Be specific.
8. Petitions are rarely effective at changing institutions or governments. Do not delude yourself that they are useful.
9. Vlog a political demonstration. If there is a strong police presence, show it.
10. Twitter is a distraction. Don't mistake it for action.
11. Write about your experiences and concrete methods for transforming society, not in the future but now, today.
12. Instead of writing on how global human rights issues can be alleviated, volunteer at a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, a free medical clinic. Find out how human rights are being violated in your neighborhood.
13. Participate in a political demonstration or protest. Get arrested.
14. Invite someone who is a political radical to mentor you.
15. Discuss how direct action can change society more than blogging.
16. Instead of correcting injustice through the proxies of non-profit and advocacy organizations, see if there is anything you can do in person. Be a participant, not a donor.
17. Highlight grassroots organizations.
18. Be involved in social justice/human rights efforts.
19. Create an effective means to implement social justice.
20. Discuss how school curricula stifles and suppresses citizen responsibility in students. Start independent student-led and student-run organizations. Empower students, don't patronize them.
21. Find out who profits from wars. Develop an analysis of imperialism and how it relates to colonialism. Apply it to the United States foreign policy over the last century.
22. Ask your readers to create a revolution, even a small one.
23. Spend less time blogging and reading blogs. Spend more time acting, deliberately and radically.
24. Participate.
25. Blogging has limited influence, on you and others. Acting transforms you and society deeply. Never mistake theory for practice. Do it. Do it now.
I was struck by the weakly Liberal tone of many of the suggestions. Perhaps it's just the self-congratulatory attitude of self-importance permeating it that annoys me. The whole list reeks of "Look at me! I'm making a big change in the world! And I'm telling you all about it!"
While educating people has value, it isn't the same as actually effecting change with sweat and physical action. Most blogs are the equivalent of parlor pontification.
I started to wonder what a more radical version might look like, a version that put more emphasis on doing things in the world rather than just blogging about doing things. So here is my first attempt at such a list. It's repetitious in places but it's intended to mirror the original list linked above. I just re-wrote each numbered point as I came to it. It's not perfect but it's mine.
1. Start simple: Steal from large corporations.
2. Join an activist group, a group that performs direct action.
3. Or if there isn't a group with politics or an activist philosophy you agree with, create your own. Form a small group of trusted people and collectively decide on goals and actions.
4. Videoblog an interview with someone with radical political views. Ask them about strategies to transform society.
5. Share a meal with a stranger, someone not like you.
6. Has someone you love been affected by class warfare or capitalism's indifference to individual suffering?? Share your story and raise awareness.
7. Demand change from government and corporations. Be specific.
8. Petitions are rarely effective at changing institutions or governments. Do not delude yourself that they are useful.
9. Vlog a political demonstration. If there is a strong police presence, show it.
10. Twitter is a distraction. Don't mistake it for action.
11. Write about your experiences and concrete methods for transforming society, not in the future but now, today.
12. Instead of writing on how global human rights issues can be alleviated, volunteer at a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, a free medical clinic. Find out how human rights are being violated in your neighborhood.
13. Participate in a political demonstration or protest. Get arrested.
14. Invite someone who is a political radical to mentor you.
15. Discuss how direct action can change society more than blogging.
16. Instead of correcting injustice through the proxies of non-profit and advocacy organizations, see if there is anything you can do in person. Be a participant, not a donor.
17. Highlight grassroots organizations.
18. Be involved in social justice/human rights efforts.
19. Create an effective means to implement social justice.
20. Discuss how school curricula stifles and suppresses citizen responsibility in students. Start independent student-led and student-run organizations. Empower students, don't patronize them.
21. Find out who profits from wars. Develop an analysis of imperialism and how it relates to colonialism. Apply it to the United States foreign policy over the last century.
22. Ask your readers to create a revolution, even a small one.
23. Spend less time blogging and reading blogs. Spend more time acting, deliberately and radically.
24. Participate.
25. Blogging has limited influence, on you and others. Acting transforms you and society deeply. Never mistake theory for practice. Do it. Do it now.
Labels: blogging, blogs, direct action, lists, political, politics
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Random 10 Songs: "T.V. Scars, Glass Balls" Edition
Tonight is eclipsed by memory, moon visions drifting in from the edges. I am hollow and enervated, sustained by letters of little import. These songs provide the soundtrack to my memory palace. See them...
Bonus track: Bob Dylan - Desolation Row
- Jesse Malin - Scars of Love
- Richard Thompson - Johnny's Far Away
- Small Faces - Donkey Rides, Penny A Glass
- Savoy Brown Blues Band - Cold Blooded Woman
- Shudder to Think - Take the Child
- Cramps - She's Got Balls
- Filter - Columind
- Nils Lofgren - Rock And Roll Crook
- Holy Bulls - T.V. Eye
- Placebo - Centrefolds
Bonus track: Bob Dylan - Desolation Row
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Historical Revisionism of the Weather Underground
While watching an episode of the American remake of Life on Mars on TV, I was intrigued by a plotline that supposedly involved the Weather Underground. One bomb in the show killed three policemen and several civilians. A few other people were killed in subsequent bombings.
Now, Life on Mars is set in 1973 in New York City. At least part of the appeal of the show is it inhabits a real point in American history, a very specific milieu. Real historic events are often used as "color" for the characters' interactions and, in this particular case, a plot device.
In point of fact, as far as I know, only one death is attributed to a deliberate Weatherman bombing and even that one may not have been the Weathermen. The case was never solved and the Weathermen never claimed credit for it.
The manipulation or distortion of documented factual truth in service of drama is nothing new or unusual. TV shows are entertainment, not documentaries. Yet there is something to be learned here about historical memes and control of populations.
Today, signing an online petition to bring back a Victory garden to the White House is considered an important form of activism. Contributing money to MoveOn.com for lobbying and advertising is considered radical activism in some circles. Actually, these activities are merely normal, conventional and long-established ways of appealing to government for change. There is nothing remotely "radical" about such tactics. They are "feel-good" tactics, unlikely to significantly change things but, rather, to make the individual feel like they are demanding important change.
It's difficult to imaging a time when such mild tactics were sneered at by a sizable percentage of 16 to 30 year olds. Yet in a period where over a million Vietnamese had been killed in a "preemptive" war* and tens of thousands of US soldiers had been killed or maimed, it was considered very urgent to stop the US government from continuing the war in Vietnam. Anti-war protests seemed to be having no effect on US policy in 1970 when the Weatherman organization was at its peak activity level.
In the late 1960s and early '70s, political radicals were being arrested and some were being shot dead. For example, Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers was drugged, probably by a police informant, and killed in a police raid. The FBI's COINTELPRO was actively attacking leftist groups, usually by covert means but also through local police departments.
There isn't a lot of popular support today in the USA for the tactics of the Weatherman Underground, for the bombing of military recruitment offices and police stations. Yet there is almost always a context for such actions, a philosophy behind the tactics. The Weathermen didn't spring out of nowhere, a mad radical group flailing wildly without goals or reason.
I personally wouldn't endorse such actions but I'm also not unsympathetic to the impulse. Our political establishment is ponderous, difficult to affect, massively influenced by corporate money and lobbyists. Petitions and rallies don't change things. Elections rarely change things significantly or quickly.
This brings me back to the issue of historic revisionism in popular culture. Life on Mars writers opted to rearrange actual events. The motive behind the bombings in the episode isn't political, it's a personal vendetta. Superficial political trappings fall aside to reveal simple personal revenge, and misdirected revenge at that. In one fell swoop, the episode discredits the Weathermen as petty, misinformed and misdirected. It attributes historically inaccurate killings to the Weathermen, boosting the boogeyman factor of the group. Because if the group is illogical and murderous, people won't look too deeply at the historic record.
There is a strongly articulated view today saying all that '60s protest stuff was just silly self-indulgence by pampered white college kids. It wasn't important. It wasn't significant. It was immaturity run rampant.
I don't believe this view. I highly recommend reading some of the manifestos that came out of the time period in the USA. You might be surprised and inspired.
The Black Panther Party - Ten Point Platform & Program (October 1966)
Port Huron Statement, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), (June 1962)
------
*The Domino Theory foreign policy rationale of the 1950s-1960s is roughly equivalent to the "Stop the terrorists there so we don't have to stop them here" rationale for US intervention in Iraq.
Now, Life on Mars is set in 1973 in New York City. At least part of the appeal of the show is it inhabits a real point in American history, a very specific milieu. Real historic events are often used as "color" for the characters' interactions and, in this particular case, a plot device.
In point of fact, as far as I know, only one death is attributed to a deliberate Weatherman bombing and even that one may not have been the Weathermen. The case was never solved and the Weathermen never claimed credit for it.
The manipulation or distortion of documented factual truth in service of drama is nothing new or unusual. TV shows are entertainment, not documentaries. Yet there is something to be learned here about historical memes and control of populations.
Today, signing an online petition to bring back a Victory garden to the White House is considered an important form of activism. Contributing money to MoveOn.com for lobbying and advertising is considered radical activism in some circles. Actually, these activities are merely normal, conventional and long-established ways of appealing to government for change. There is nothing remotely "radical" about such tactics. They are "feel-good" tactics, unlikely to significantly change things but, rather, to make the individual feel like they are demanding important change.
It's difficult to imaging a time when such mild tactics were sneered at by a sizable percentage of 16 to 30 year olds. Yet in a period where over a million Vietnamese had been killed in a "preemptive" war* and tens of thousands of US soldiers had been killed or maimed, it was considered very urgent to stop the US government from continuing the war in Vietnam. Anti-war protests seemed to be having no effect on US policy in 1970 when the Weatherman organization was at its peak activity level.
In the late 1960s and early '70s, political radicals were being arrested and some were being shot dead. For example, Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers was drugged, probably by a police informant, and killed in a police raid. The FBI's COINTELPRO was actively attacking leftist groups, usually by covert means but also through local police departments.
There isn't a lot of popular support today in the USA for the tactics of the Weatherman Underground, for the bombing of military recruitment offices and police stations. Yet there is almost always a context for such actions, a philosophy behind the tactics. The Weathermen didn't spring out of nowhere, a mad radical group flailing wildly without goals or reason.
I personally wouldn't endorse such actions but I'm also not unsympathetic to the impulse. Our political establishment is ponderous, difficult to affect, massively influenced by corporate money and lobbyists. Petitions and rallies don't change things. Elections rarely change things significantly or quickly.
This brings me back to the issue of historic revisionism in popular culture. Life on Mars writers opted to rearrange actual events. The motive behind the bombings in the episode isn't political, it's a personal vendetta. Superficial political trappings fall aside to reveal simple personal revenge, and misdirected revenge at that. In one fell swoop, the episode discredits the Weathermen as petty, misinformed and misdirected. It attributes historically inaccurate killings to the Weathermen, boosting the boogeyman factor of the group. Because if the group is illogical and murderous, people won't look too deeply at the historic record.
There is a strongly articulated view today saying all that '60s protest stuff was just silly self-indulgence by pampered white college kids. It wasn't important. It wasn't significant. It was immaturity run rampant.
I don't believe this view. I highly recommend reading some of the manifestos that came out of the time period in the USA. You might be surprised and inspired.
The Black Panther Party - Ten Point Platform & Program (October 1966)
Port Huron Statement, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), (June 1962)
------
*The Domino Theory foreign policy rationale of the 1950s-1960s is roughly equivalent to the "Stop the terrorists there so we don't have to stop them here" rationale for US intervention in Iraq.
Labels: Life on Mars, politics, pop culture, radicals, SDS, Weatherman
Monday, February 09, 2009
Basic Economics: Necessities
With all the talk about stimulating the "consumer" economy, I can't help but question the basic assumptions behind this approach.
At heart, modern capitalism is designed to devour the lower tiers of society without mercy. Capitalism only cares if you have money, materials or labor. This can be simplified as the ability to create products or to purchase them. The needs of society and its members are moot, literally inconsequential to the process of acquiring capital resources. Or rather it is only important as it affects labor or the consumer ends of the equation.
Humans have a few very basic needs to merely survive from day-to-day: nourishing food, clean water, adequate shelter. Coming close on those is social interaction/community, basic health care, meaningful work and some leisure time. (Some might contest the necessity of leisure time but I'd argue that without it many people lose something intrinsic to their humanity.)
US society is exceptionally artificial and alienated from the natural world in many ways. The vast majority of Americans live in urban centers or the sub-urban communities surrounding these centers. This affects those basic needs.
A prime example of is food. No urban center is able to feed itself. Think about that for a moment. There is no farmland to speak of in an urban center. No significant livestock. Because of this, if there was a significant disruption of our transportation system, cities would begin starving almost immediately. I'm not talking a terrorist attack. Just an increase in the price of gas to affect truckers would do it. The peak price of gas last summer created a crisis for truckers.
While the Cold Warriors have been busy congratulating themselves about the collapse of the Soviet Union, we've been placid about the problems of capitalism. No society or economic system is so prosperous and perfect that it can't collapse catastrophically.
I'd like to see a society that provides for the basic needs of its people. The USA isn't doing this.
At heart, modern capitalism is designed to devour the lower tiers of society without mercy. Capitalism only cares if you have money, materials or labor. This can be simplified as the ability to create products or to purchase them. The needs of society and its members are moot, literally inconsequential to the process of acquiring capital resources. Or rather it is only important as it affects labor or the consumer ends of the equation.
Humans have a few very basic needs to merely survive from day-to-day: nourishing food, clean water, adequate shelter. Coming close on those is social interaction/community, basic health care, meaningful work and some leisure time. (Some might contest the necessity of leisure time but I'd argue that without it many people lose something intrinsic to their humanity.)
US society is exceptionally artificial and alienated from the natural world in many ways. The vast majority of Americans live in urban centers or the sub-urban communities surrounding these centers. This affects those basic needs.
A prime example of is food. No urban center is able to feed itself. Think about that for a moment. There is no farmland to speak of in an urban center. No significant livestock. Because of this, if there was a significant disruption of our transportation system, cities would begin starving almost immediately. I'm not talking a terrorist attack. Just an increase in the price of gas to affect truckers would do it. The peak price of gas last summer created a crisis for truckers.
While the Cold Warriors have been busy congratulating themselves about the collapse of the Soviet Union, we've been placid about the problems of capitalism. No society or economic system is so prosperous and perfect that it can't collapse catastrophically.
I'd like to see a society that provides for the basic needs of its people. The USA isn't doing this.
Labels: capitalism, economy, needs
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Random 10 Songs: "Godfathers Love Rattlesnake Ashes" Edition
Apparently unclear on the casual nature of blogging, I neglect this corner storefront. So here is another relatively empty post of music titles.
- Bowie, David - Ashes to Ashes
- Teenage Fanclub - Your Love Is the Place Where I Come From
- Fleetwood Mac/Peter Green - Rattlesnake Shake [Live]
- Rú-Rá - Two Pence Worth
- The Caravans - Know Your Rights
- Lightnin' Hopkins - Woman, Woman
- Talking Heads - Crosseyed and Painless
- Placebo - My Sweet Prince
- Godfathers - Just Like You
- The Donnas - You Don't Wanna Call
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Nixon v Bush
In 2005, I created this image from the iconic photo of Richard Nixon leaving the White House after his resignation.At that time, I had the hope that Bush 43 would leave in disgrace, forced from office by scandal and massive popular sentiment. I didn't expect it, but I hoped nonetheless. Now he's gone and it seems appropriate to revisit the picture. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Gone, Bush, Gone!
Like a "farewell to arms," I see Bush 43 in my rear view mirror, receding into the distance. As a tribute to my various cruel renderings of him, I'm going to re-post a few.How sweet was the mocking of Bush! The jagged distortion, the manifest ugliness of his soul blooming and festering in images as he was morphed into monkey and goblin faces for my pleasure and amusement.
Now the birds have begun to sing as he limps resentfully into decline and oblivion. If only early dementia could find him in the public eye.
Labels: Bush, doktored, graphic
The CR FAQ - An Introduction to Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism
