propositions press

22-3254: a great finish

Before I turn the page on the just-completed spring 2012 semester at Columbia College, I must make mention of the final project work done by my students. The course 22-3254 was called Making Print Media Political, and the last assignment was to produce and disseminate work without traditional authorship. In the course I exposed the students to work that is overtly political in both traditional fine art contexts (typically distinguished by standard authorship), on the one hand, and in a functional, social struggle, or guerrilla context (with authorship de-emphasized or erased altogether), on the other. The idea behind the last assignment was to free the students from the constraints imposed by authored work. They took the assignment to heart and pushed limits in both content and dissemination strategies. I cautioned them properly, outlining what kinds of gray legality govern even the smallest kinds of public dissemination. In fact, one of them ended up in handcuffs while executing his work. He talked his out of trouble, but was forced by Chicago police to give up his documentary images. I gave him full credit.

Overall, the results were impressive. One student who lives by dumpster diving made some wonderful hand-drawn signs to mark his favorite dumpsters, as if they were regular stores. He affixed them to nearby alley fences or on the dumpsters themselves. Another simply accelerated what she’d been doing more or less constantly since last fall: make posters for Occupy Chicago and Occupy Columbia. I critiqued her designs pretty thoroughly but I could not hide my pleasure. And some I could not constructively critique at all. Like this one. It is too good.

A pair of students made some bookmarks with partial but recognizable images of famous figures on one side and a date with a QR code on the other. The dates and codes lead to online information about what that person had said on that date. The statement is of a surprising or lesser known nature, somehow “political,” and certainly controversial. The students went to two different bookstores, Quimby’s in Wicker Park and a suburban Barnes & Noble. In both settings they made guerrilla placements using your standard reverse-shoplifting technique. Not surprisingly, the Barnes & Noble staff warned them off a few times while Quimby’s workers said nothing.

Several of the more pointed productions are worth showing here. One is this excellent appropriation of Magritte’s The Treachery of Images. The student had been obsessing over the Berlin Conference of 1884, at which the division of the continent by the European powers into defined territories was superimposed upon the many indigenous identities, languages, and generations-long homelands. Divided up without regard to the indigenous groupings, the Berlin Conference bequeathed to the modern nations of Africa a fate fraught with conflict, through broken cultural affinities and inappropriate unities. This work takes Magritte’s jab at the intangibility of representations to another level of futility, that of the tragic and unwanted inheritance. The student produced it as a poster, but we discussed it as a t-shirt. I would buy one.

 

Another student frontally addressed a college controversy surrounding the president of the college. With different campus constituencies applying pressure on the administration all year long—students, both full and part-time faculty, and staffers from various research units from around the college, President Warrick Carter at one point cracked. He very publicly lost his cool during his annual State of the College address, thereby sealing his reputation negatively in the minds of many students. To recall a moment Dr. Carter will never live down, this anonymous project made itself felt at Manifest—a prime occasion for a campus statement.

  

     

Finally, two students with different projects attacked the advertising on CTA trains. According to the intentions of their respective projects each achieved mixed results. The trains are a tempting venue, but harder to invade than one might think, and at the same time less interactive than one might assume. For the great majority of passengers, the train is about passivity and this can be overlooked in the design of placards that ask for response via Twitter (as one of the projects did). But in an instance of the art making leading to the production of a valuable image despite the unrealized intended outcome, one of them came away with this striking picture.

I would have difficulty coming up with a better document of the profound crisis within which we Americans all now simply accept as everyday life—the security/control-society on one side, and the speculative gambling economy, on the other. Both social poisons served up in the bite-sized portion of an individually comprehended and internalized advertisement. A bigger problem, indeed.

recalling legitimacy

While the rest of the American left was out on May Day celebrating, trying to make something happen, or block business as usual, Occupy Madison marked the day by quietly closing down the encampment they’d held for months. The fact that this development meant practically nothing to the Wisconsin movement says volumes about the different political space traveled by the Wisconsin Uprising at this moment, compared to the national Occupy movement. It is not Occupy that is on the mind of Wisconsinites, but rather the upcoming Wisconsin recall election targeting governor Scott Walker and several others.

The election, set for June 5, 2012, only about six weeks from now, was forced by overwhelming petition. Before then, the Democratic and Republican candidates will be winnowed down to one nominee from each party by a primary election set for May 8, barely one week from now. May Day it is not. But unlike the May Day protests, actions, symbolism, and demonstrations—whose sound and fury, let’s face it, are pretty easily tuned out by the mainstream (and not just media, but actual people)—the consequences of this election will be felt concretely by everyone in Wisconsin, activist or not, and for way longer than the news cycle of a single day. Hundreds of thousands in Wisconsin—probably even millions—will feel the effects of this election directly in the measurable forms of a reduced paycheck, a lost job, a health problem that leads to financial ruin, an unmanageable classroom, and twenty other big things. Furthermore, the consequences will ripple out nationally, either to draw a line on austerity attacks or to green light the regressive austerity agenda.

It has been said by Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, and countless radicals that if elections mattered, they would be made illegal. Well, through their various voter suppression efforts, the Wisconsin GOP has been trying to do exactly that—make voting difficult and legally restricted. This election matters and they know it. But the movement grassroots has not grasped yet the meaning of the election. We must discuss this, if the movement is to have any hope of effectively continuing beyond the advertised finality of the recall election. This is my attempt to think through how the movement needs to interpret the election if the Uprising is to remain relevant, powerful, and strategically ready on the morning of June 6, no matter who wins or loses.

*

Wisconsin has an open primary, meaning anybody of any party affiliation or non-affiliation can vote for any of the candidates. Conservatives can vote for a Democratic candidate and progressives can vote for a Republican. An open primary removes the exclusivity of an official party-identified electorate, which is good. At the same time, the open primary assures an element of cynicism through tactical voting and bad-faith candidacies. 

For example, right now the Republicans are running several candidates in Democratic primaries without a shred of pretense that they are anything other than electoral hurdles and tactical disruptions. In the case of some or maybe even all of the “fake” Democrats, there is hardly anything dishonest about them. For example, the Senate Majority Leader of the Wisconsin state senate is Scott Fitzgerald, and he is facing a recall election of his own (also June 5). In order to force the Democratic challenger, Lori Compas, into spending resources on a primary election, regressive Republican activist Gary Ellerman is running as a Democrat. If it weren’t for him, Compas would not have to compete in a primary at all. This helps Fitzgerald by taking the fight to the Democratic primary election, which, if enough Republicans vote in it, theoretically could be won by Ellerman. Then he simply runs a concessionary campaign for the recall election and hands a victory to his buddy Fitzgerald. So Compas must win the primary.

This tactic was used back in the summer of 2011 against some of the Democratic state senators facing recall. It has not been actually successful, not to the point of undermining a good-faith candidate. Not yet. But this time the Republicans are trying harder, and I heard some rumor about Tea Partiers pledging to vote in the Democratic primaries.

The tricky part comes with the rule that however one chooses to vote in the primary, a voter only gets one vote. So if conservatives spend their vote on a bad-faith Democrat, then they leave the Republican side open for progressive voters to do the same thing to them. Democrats, unsurprisingly, are not aggressively taking the opportunity to generate havoc for the Republicans by running bad-faith candidates, somehow being content to leave the Republican candidate unchallenged while they sort out their own. As usual we can chalk up the Democrats’ timidity to a cowardice masquerading as integrity—a lack of fighting spirit that essentially has become the national Democratic brand, from Obama on down.

But here again, an opportunity opens up. Arthur Kohl-Riggs, a young activist with no Democratic Party connection, recognized the gap and filled it by running in the Republican gubernatorial primary as—and get this—not a “fake” Republican, but as a good-faith Lincoln Republican, a LaFollette Republican, which is a posture that carries inescapably more than a whiff of irony, if not exactly bad-faith. Kohl-Riggs is recognized by many in the uprising circles as a regular at Capitol demonstrations and for his social media activism, so it is clear to all that he is certainly not of the contemporary Republicans. But he is playing it straight, pounding the argument that he is, in fact, the true conservative, that Scott Walker is a traitor to the grand Lincoln tradition of integrity, justice, and leadership, and that true conservatives will consider voting for him.

That Kohl-Riggs got himself on the primary ballot means that however secure Walker and the Republicans feel, a signal has been sent. The mantle of the LaFollette tradition—such a Wisconsin thing—could be picked up yet in the future by some enterprising and substantive candidate who speaks the language of Colbert irony, and who potentially could bring a measure of chaos into the Republican side, and do it without any Democratic Party involvement whatsoever.  Could there really be an insurgent force of ironic conservatism brewing somewhere that could invade the Wisconsin GOP? Not if the GOP can help it, of course. See how they’ve shut down the principled libertarian candidate, Ron Paul, for years. If Kohl-Riggs dedicates himself to his idea, I for one would not discount the possibility of some youth-driven movement to reclaim conservatism eventually gaining visibility. It might be marginal to the party mainstream, but again like Ron Paul, it would bring into play many new people. Kohl-Riggs is only 23. If he decides to become a politician (as opposed to the citizen-running-for-office that he is now), to perform that act, follow that career, and dedicate himself to the craft of becoming an image, then who is to say where will he be in fifteen years.

Let’s parse out the present situation.

Scott Walker, the incumbent Republican governor, faces a primary challenge from Arthur Kohl-Riggs.

Democrats Kathleen Falk, Kathleen Vinehout, Tom Barrett, and Doug LaFollette are running against each other in the primary. Gladys Huber, a known Republican, is running as a bad-faith Democratic candidate.

Voters get one vote, and it goes to only one of the above seven candidates—the vote will be spent on either a Democrat or a Republican, not both. Say a sizable bloc of progressives decide to vote for Kohl-Riggs. Maybe a previously non-voting bloc comes out of the woodwork, attracted by the Kohl-Riggs novelty. Whatever the case, the vote total for Kohl-Riggs is sure to be small. But in a tight Democratic primary, those votes (or rather, the consequent non-votes for the Democrats) will make a difference. Where might those non-votes leave Falk, given that, presumably, many of those people would have voted for her over Barrett? Then again, a prediction based on ideological correspondence perhaps would have many of Kohl-Riggs’ crossover voters going for the outsider-ish progressives,Vinehout or LaFollette.

Similarly, conservatives who might otherwise have voted for Huber just to mess with the Democrats might feel some pressure to spend their vote on the Republican side for Walker because of Kohl-Riggs. If he were to attract even a five-digit vote total, Kohl-Riggs, the future/throwback candidate, might garner more media attention embarassing to Walker, and therefore (though we know that Walker himself plays the unflappable zombie to inhuman perfection) further damage the Republican brand. I can imagine conservative activists thinking it more important to put on a display of overwhelming support for Walker than throw vote wrenches into the Democrats’ race by marking the arrow for Huber.

* 

As in an epic sporting contest in which the bad breaks, bad calls, and bad bounces on both sides cancel each other out, perhaps the tactical manuveurs will ricochet through all corners of the contest, leaving no perceptible effect. Or, maybe it is all even until the very end, leaving a final surprise to stand as the defining controversy that shifts a race this way or that. Of course, unlike in sports, political candidates feel no special obligation to respect the rules. They bend or challenge them all along the way. And that, of course, only guarantees the expansion of cynical tendencies in two directions—ie, that platoons of lawyers searching for technicalities end up deciding the contest for the parties while ordinary voters throw up their hands and wonder, why did we even bother doing this?

My armchair dissection may not clarify the elections themselves, and likely further confuses one’s predictions. But the very futility of sorting through the permutations and possible outcomes of tactical versus naïve voting makes apparent the larger but hardly abstract problem of legitimacy as it relates to elections in general, and to this election in particular. Because of the unavoidable cynicism and calculation inherent in voting, there can be no moral legitimacy gained or lost in an election victory, period. The Wisconsin movement must be very clear about this. No matter who wins or loses, we will not accept the victory as the final stamp of legitimacy—any outcome is in essence illegitimate on the level of values. An election is a non-violent contest for control over the state’s levers of coercion—and that is all it is. This is a crucial statement to broadcast because should he win, whether it be fairly or by theft, Scott Walker will wear the victory on his sleeve, using its aura of legitimacy as a bludgeon. Make no mistake, Walker and his GOP cabal have a second, more horrible act of legislative aggression at the ready, to be unveiled just as soon as he beats back the recall. To the good people of Wisconsin: be prepared to fight a governor unafraid to rule by emergency executive decree—and everyday forward, he will remind everyone that this is what the voters decided. Such will be the emboldened Scott Walker we will face after his victory. 

Thus, it goes without saying that we must defeat Walker in June. This is no small task given that Walker will have amassed a war chest that guarantees dominance of television and radio advertising, and has the support of any number of third party groups, flush with cash and a willingness to lie. 

But should this much-desired defeat come to pass, whoever the Democrat is will have earned no legitimacy on a values level. The movement grassroots must view and treat the new governor as distrustfully as any other ambitious, ego-driven careerist politician all too capable of selling out the public interest once in office (which is, of course, a specialty of the Democrats). The values of the movement will only be expressed by the elected leadership if the movement remains large, vital, visible, and beyond the reach of both union and Democratic Party control—or, in other words, dangerous, hydra-headed, and untamed. How to be that movement and yet engage in the most difficult and momentous electoral contest most of us will have ever seen is the paradox within which the Uprising now exists. Let us embrace it. 

*

My last thought concerns the mentality and commitment of a winning movement. The last and perhaps most meaningful victory gained in the Wisconsin movement was the successful blockage of new mining up north—a key item on GOP’s corporate agenda. (For those interested in the story, Rebecca Kemble’s reporting for the Progressive is a great place to start.) The victory was gained at the Capitol through a state senate vote, but was won over a translocal theater of activism and coalition-building, binding together numerous groups and constituencies across different parts of the state. Of complementary significance was the willingness and even resignation among coalition members regarding the likelihood of having to fight an eventual ground war up north, pitting our bodies against their machines. Without this coalition, led by the native peoples of the Bad River Band Chippewa, the victory could not have been won. Without the latent militancy, spiritual dedication, and specter of nihilism belonging to a people who recognize a battle for survival when they see it, the victory could not have been won. Without the ability to simultaneously: lobby legislators politely and agitate on the streets angrily; collect independent, scientifically-sound research and launch barbs of wit and ridicule at GOP targets; pack the assembly hearings in person and disseminate information through social media, the victory could not have been won.

The lesson is clear. Prepare for the worst. Work for the best. Make our appeals to the hearts and minds of the unconvinced while standing firm at a threshold of ultimate defense. And deal with whatever comes.

 

 

the sticker pack of 22-3254

How does one teach the art of intervention? This is an important question for more and more teaching artists, if only because so many of the artists who do the kind of work that doesn’t get rewarded by the commercial art market have found spaces of livelihood in the art schools, universities, colleges, and K-12 schools as education labor. But it is more than that. The arts of social engagement (involving every discipline) have opened necessary avenues of practical citizenship and political action. In the visual arts, an area in which a lot of theorizing about and validation of social engagement now goes on, the question feels heavy. The fact that so much art activity these days is about and/or actually involves teaching, learning, and education, adds urgency simply for the fact of the pedagogical mode being put on the aesthetic agenda.

It is against this inquiry that I had an opportunity recently to try out a modest intervention exercise for the students in the class I am teaching right now at Columbia College, 22-3254 Special Topics: Making Print Political. The short description is the students designed and assembled a handsome pack of five stickers and distributed them at a March 19 anti-war panel discussion event unannounced.

I have done projects of a social engagement nature with students in the past, but only as a visiting artist at other schools. This is the first time I had the opportunity to embed such an exercise into one of my own classes. This is how the project came together.

Critical Encounters (or CE) is a year-long campus wide theme and series of inquiries at Columbia College Chicago, around which a faculty fellow coordinates programming, teaching, and academic activity from a variety of disciplines and fields. For the 2011-12 school year the CE theme is Rights, Radicals, + Revolution. A great list of starting point inquiries can be found here. The course I am teaching right now was offered under the auspices of the CE initiative.

The CE initiative also issues small project-based grants to faculty and students to help them realize creative projects during the semester that fall outside of their normal work and specifically is intended to advance the conversation around the CE theme. I was awarded one of these grants to fund a project with my class using commercially produced print media to be disseminated at the March 19 event.

Learning the art of intervention requires the stakes of a real audience, and we were not going to assemble an audience on our own. Piggy-backing on somebody else’s event was the way to go, especially a panel event. Moreover, the panel format practically begs for intervention. Panels are by nature tedious, but boring formats for discussions about peace and social justice issues—ie, about how the world needs to be different—are particularly disheartening. Even if rather unintrusive, adding an unannounced element could only help expand the experience for those in attendance.

More importantly, the timing worked. The successful grantees would only be notified the first week of February, two weeks into the fourteen-week semester. Not knowing until then left me in the position of hedging a simple project against the potentially short time frame for execution. Pushing the completion date out beyond Spring Break would have interfered with the last and most ambitious assignments of the semester; getting something together before then was impossible given the concentrated material I had already planned for the first half of the course. In essence, the CE grant project, if it were to happen, was fated to be a side project within the regular course work. For all these reasons, March 19 made for a convenient target date (the class meets on Mondays). For conceptual reasons, the event lent our project a built-in significance and starting point for interpretation, it marking the ninth anniverary of the 2003 beginning of the Iraq War.

It was an intervention with no name. But it had everything else—a good look and feel, material simplicity, insistent but non-ideological politics, a deserving occasion, and a collaborative spirit. After reviewing ideas, format, material options, and costs, we decided to go with stickers as the medium. We did not discuss the desired outcome of the intervention, but I am not sure that conversation would have been very useful anyway. For one thing, the students are neither fully agreed politically, nor on average fully committed to their positions—they are in midst of political educations. It would be a good exchange, but it would have been premature for the purposes of determining a unified direction. We will discuss outcome in the debriefing.

The stickers were good for breaking up the project into tasks. In addition to creating the graphic designs, performing the on-site distribution, and designing the packet were the main tasks. Some of the students have online channels through which they can share the documentation. Everybody contributed.

Instead of a single clear and explicit message, we went with the idea of an assortment of designs, without stylistic unity, and with an openess to messaging. The design work was split among five students, with each allowed to interpret the meaning of the event openly. The students came up with fifteen designs out of which the entire group decided on a final five for the stickers. I am certainly biased, but I think they are amazing. As a way to take the event's audience and therefore the conversation to places positively beyond the event's announced topics of peace and anti-militarism, the art object was undoubtedly a success.

 

Once the first stage of conceptual conversations were done, I played the role as coordinator, making sure that people stayed observant of the calendar, kept track of the spending, did all the online ordering, and received the finished materials. Here we are, for assembling the packs.

Then a team went to the Cultural Center to distribute and document. We had guesses about the event’s audience, in terms of size and profile, but no certainty until we got there. Turns out it was a small crowd, and worse yet, only two of the four scheduled speakers made it. The event energy was low. Rather than viewing that as a failure, I prefer to think of us as having made the event far more interesting than it would have been otherwise. Here we are, gifting them away.

 

Here's a dude checking them out. He was decked out in Occupy buttons and carried with him a few copies of an Occupy publication. I think it was the Occupied Chicago Tribune. 

The project was an exercise in experiential learning, and was intended to show students how to make something simple but meaningful, using some standard strategies of activist and socially-engaged art. Conceptually, the intent was to put a friendly wrinkle into a politically-informed but fatally unimaginative event. I would say our goal was achieved, even if the bar was set fairly low. But to that end, a spectrum of learning purposes were fulfilled, from the universal lesson of meeting a tight deadline with a quality product, to the accumulation of concrete experience in producing print media art work.  

The more complex questions having to do with performative interventions, the aesthetics of what Brian Holmes calls 'event work,' what the institutionalization of activist art bodes, how art interventions might figure in revitalizing a moribund leftist culture, and so forth, remain to be explored. But teaching the art of interventions reproduces presumed values and priorities–even a modest project like ours does this, because of its institutional sponsorship (and attendant taboos), the inequities inherent in a teacher/student arrangement, and many other manifestations of the power structure embedded in the conditions surrounding this project. Given that, I look forward to seeing more critical analysis of such teaching, hopefully beginning with our debriefing.

wi uprising @ year one

It was one year ago that the outward ripples of the Tunisian uprising were felt across borders and through unlikely differences in context. One of those places that saw a righteous outrage directed at a local tyrant in early 2011 was Madison, Wisconsin. Beginning on the day Mubarak fell, Wisconsinites opened their Friday after work routine with the surprise announcement that Scott Walker's so-called budget repair bill, set for a vote early the next week, would end the collective bargaining rights of the state's public sector union. As citizens read the fine print, they found that the bill contained other controversial measures, as well, such as a provision to sell off some publicly owned energy facilities on a no-bid basis. A variety of constituencies found reason to mobilize.

Thanks to the grassroots info-activism of individual citizens from all quarters of the state, the rapid circulation of information through social media, and the prevailing global mood of ya basta (and in this sense, Madison has long been a very global town), within a matter of hours our governor crossed the all-important line of perception, going from harmless amateur to despotic, venal, and dangerous egomaniac. Then, as Walker dug in his heels, the movement to criticize, resist, and now to oust him, gained traction through months and months of renewed outrages committed by him and his Republican lieutenants. Right up to, literally, this very moment. As I type this post, the Republican-controlled Assembly are preparing to ram through yet another of their controversial, poorly-written bills. This one would effectively gut Wisconsin's regulatory apparatus that has successfully conserved wetlands across the state, giving in wholesale to the well-financed interests of irresponsible short term wealth-generating development. It would also have the effect of heaping additional unworkable duties on the DNR, setting that agency up for failure. This is a prime example of T.C. Frank's wrecking crew in action. 

So at the one-year mark, what does it look like going forward? The many subplots and numerous controversies of the last six months have recently been reduced to three main storylines, each with its own actors, antagonisms, and possible outcomes. Now fully developed as political narratives, how they play out from this point will shape the contours of the Wisconsin movement for at least the first half of 2012 and possibly the second. The three stories are 1) the massive grassroots recall effort and election, 2) the battle over new mining up north, and 3) the ongoing FBI John Doe investigation into illegal activities in Scott Walker’s office when he was Milwaukee County Executive and running for governor in 2010. 

The overwhelming enthusiasm of the petition-phase of the recall campaign shocked even the optimists. Gathering over a million signatures means that two of every five would have to be invalidated, an insanely unrealistic prospect, thereby crushing the Republicans' first defense. As well, in absolute numbers, the total comes very close to the 1.2 million votes that Walker received in 2010, indicating how widespread the disapproval really is. Most importantly, given the grassroots nature of the recall effort, this contest is being written as a David vs Goliath story, and therefore a possible turning point in electoral strategy beyond this one election. The David (the WI movement, leading the Democrats and not the other way around) and Goliath (Walker, Koch, ALEC, WMC, money, money, money) story, helped along by citizen reporting on the forces organizing behind Walker, has opened this struggle to a possible outcome in keeping with the idealism that has fueled the movement thus far. If the movement capitulates to the conservative tendencies that are already emanating from within the Democratic Party and union leadership, it will have been another opportunity lost.   

Up north, anticipating what would be in effect a ground invasion, the tribes and their allies are ready to defend their lands, through the courts, and physically if necessary, in the hills. There are successful treaty rights and environmental defense campaigns within the recent memory of a great many Wisconsin activists; organizers are confident in their abilities to form strong native/settler, urban/rural coalitions and use all tactics, from lobbying and media work to civil disobedience and direct action. The state’s strong environmental constituencies (remember, Wisconsin is the state of Aldo Leopold and Gaylord Nelson) are already on the same page in opposing the proposed new mining, and the strict regulatory regime that ranks Wisconsin one of the states least friendly to mining is a legacy of the victorious grassroots-led anti-mining/land preservation struggles that happened fifteen years ago around the proposed Crandon mine. Are the Republicans really anxious to go to the ground in the face of people who are willing to sacrifice their own lives before seeing the ruin of their land and culture? Are they that foolish? Yes, they are. When the invasion begins and the struggle takes a turn toward the dramatic, if the movement articulates its moral, scientific, and economic positions wisely, the chances are good that in one way or another Scott Walker's image and reputation will take another lasting hit. With any luck it would be politically fatal, career-wise.

And, finally, the drip-drip-drip criminal investigation that has placed a chokehold around Walker's inner circle raises the possibility that the other dogs are willing to cut him loose to save their own future ambitions (remember, Paul Ryan and Reince Priebus have their own delusional plans). Walker has retained a legal team, now that the John Doe investigation has the feds breathing down his neck, and I'm sure even his corporate backers are beginning to formulate their own Plan B. As far as I can tell no arm of the WI movement has a contingency plan should Walker be indicted before a recall election is scheduled, even though at this point it seems like a real possibility. I am not even sure what happens. Is he removed from office? Does an indictment trigger any sort of impeachment process? Or will the state's Republican cabal of the Fitzgeralds, JB Van Hollen, and the David Prosser state supreme court work to protect him? Our theocratic lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch is also the target of the recall campaign, and will likely stand for early election along with Walker. But could there be a situation in which she assumes the office of governor and thereby invalidates her recall? Given the tangled plots and unprecedented nature of this whole thing, the legal minutiae yet to be wrangled over cannot be underestimated. How we, as the grassroots engine of the movement, write this narrative is the question. Above all, we must continue to find ways to keep the stories open enough–through both well-timed political offensives and the attendant shaping of the mediated narrative–for a possible outcome that definitively reduces the present and future power of the regressive forces. 

Though a wooden performer in public, we know that through it all Walker's been shaken. He has attempted to spin himself a softer image in recent weeks, miserably, baldly dishonestly, and unsuccessfully. (Playing the compassionate card is not his forte; neither is being honest). But the tone deaf narcissists our careerist political system produces–and Walker is precisely such a product–never really comprehend the message, even if they sense an external threat. Scott Walker is an embodied example of what Debord wrote more than a generation ago: the spectacle is incapable of thinking strategically. And we knew this as early on, when he made a calculated move to play the role of Dairyland Dictator on the very day that Egypt's Mubarak ended his career with a literal escape for his life. Can you say political blind spot?

Blundering his way through, with all the resources that large amounts of cash can buy him, but with none of the kind that don't come with a price tag, Scott Walker now faces a crisis every which way he turns, each one of his own making. Whether Walker realizes it or not, he can never go back. Apart from the hardcore ideologues, his support has evaporated, even as his people lamely manage his deteriorating image and reputation, as exemplified by this sorry effort at staging, and then spinning, a pro-Walker event. It is safe to say Walker's done. Only the ending has yet to be written.

The relevant sign you'll see in this video, shot earlier today at the tail end of the noontime rally (after most of the people left, and before the larger afternoon rally that happened later), is the one held up by the firefighter, first at 3:36 and then at 7:18 with interaction.

    

And one year ago? Let's remind ourselves of what the mood was. Anxiety, disbelief, and a vague hopefulness in a movement yet to fully blossom, tempered by the depressive expectations of a collective lifetime of cynicism. The video below is from noon on Tuesday, February 15, 2011: the occupation of the Capitol began about fourteen hours after it was recorded. Massive demonstrations went on for weeks afterward, generating a whole culture of activism, resistance, and grassroots leadership. John Nichols' review of notable actors and events is only the very tip of the iceberg.

The movement continues, with arrests of activists being tweeted from the Capitol as I compose this, and the disgraceful dead-of-night passage of the wetlands destruction bill as I edit. 

 

 

 

 

a book, from cell 29 to room 458 (with an ocean view)

Steamed clams for dinner and a marion berry cobbler for dessert. Sideways rain and a cozy fire in the hotel room. Hot tubs, a movie, and a book. A view of waves pounding, the tide coming in, and a jigsaw puzzle on the table. 

For a short two days we are doing what winter vacationers do on the Oregon coast every year, plus enjoying this year’s speciality: Santorum jokes. 

Vacations are about getting away, but like all our Oregon trips, this one is the yearly homecoming. Our household has Oregon roots on both sides, so our trips fall under the heading of our travel corridors: back and forth, once a year, Portland/Salem/the coast to Madison/Chicago/the Midwest. But on this trip out the book I have before me takes me back the way I came, back to the places where a lot of it started for me, namely Detroit and Chicago.

I found this volume in the anarchism section at Powell’s in Portland. I was about to pass on it because $40 is a lot to pay for an old book that has seen better days.
The spine is damaged and the copyright page is torn. The corners are turned and overall, despite its lasting beauty and impressive durability–appreciate the lettering on the cover: gilded and feathered elegance in anarchism!–it is a book that clearly has been through many hands. But this isn’t just any title or any volume. This is a book of writings by Albert Parsons (aka husband of Lucy Parsons), one of the Haymarket martyrs and an anarchist printer, published posthumously. I cannot say for sure if it is a first edition, but it is copyright dated 1887 with no other dates, and the book has the look, feel, and construction of an object 125 years old. So, really, it would have been difficult to forgo even without this clincher: upon examination I noticed that it bears a stamp from the Wayne State University Libraries.

Therefore it is entirely conceivable that this very object passed through the hands of the Detroit anarchists who made up the radical world that influenced a good number of us teenagers back in the 1980s in the suburbs of Oakland County. Maybe the Detroit printer Fredy Perlman, who helped to usher into the English-speaking world the thought of Debord and the Situationists, held this very book in his hands. Maybe the activist lawyer Kenneth Cockrel, who did so much work for the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and who had earned a degree in political science from Wayne State, had racked up overdue fines on this book. Mine is not as good a story as my bibliophile friend Kevin Connolly’s tale for the ages, but in terms of a single book tracing a personal and social history generations after its publication, and the possiblities of connections we can now dream about, it is the best I have had.

But what does the journey of this volume say about the corridors of time and space that a strain of radicalism may travel? The book took shape in the cell of a wrongly condemned anarchist in the Cook County Jail,

 became a published reality shortly after the state-sanctioned murder of the author, landed for who knows how many years in the collection at Wayne State, which for many decades was one of the most accessible of America’s public urban universities. And then the book was returned to commercial circulation via Powell’s Books. Between those steps there were undoubtedly other stops—circulation through private collections, sales and re-sales, years on the shelves belonging to now unknown shops, libraries, owners, or borrowers--maybe in Michigan, maybe in Oregon, and who knows where else. In early 2012 it comes into my hands, slightly callused from guitar and presswork but mostly soft like an intellectual’s, suffering invisibly from carpal tunnel, to take back to the Midwest. Is it the completion of a circle or just another returned book in the great cosmic radical library? 

Given the battles being fought in Wisconsin, the Rahm Emanuel mayoral disaster unfolding in Chicago, and the ongoing contested destruction and reconstruction of Detroit, it feels good to be returning home with a book that others used in their midwestern-global struggles from earlier times. Maybe the timing puts a digestible veneer on my hydrocarbon privileges. If it were only about collecting this would be just another instance of radical nostalgia. To safeguard against that, who, in my turn, can I influence? Anybody out there want to borrow this book?

 

mic check'd! the best from america, 2011

By the one-month mark Occupy Wall Street had gone from a ragtag activist question mark to a movement tying together all parts of the left spectrum that changed the national political conversation from a vapid argument over Democrat and Republican debt ceiling posturing to a substantive one about income inequality, financial industry irresponsibility, and freedoms of speech and assembly. Over those same crucial weeks from the middle of October to the end of November, the movement grew and mutated, spread across the country, and evolved as a culture of political engagement. One of the hallmarks of the Occupy culture—and one of the first indicators of OWS as a new political culture—is the human mic, identified early on as an innovation by necessity, a creative technique born of and against the absurd amplification restrictions placed on the Zuccotti occupation. It is therefore accurate to say that every time the human mic is used, it is a performance with roots in resistance and a reproduction of what makes OWS its own political creation, that is to say, a political reality. That partly explains why the mic check was readily spun off by activists from its native milieu of the General Assembly and deployed as a technique of confrontational intervention in hostile spaces. Even as a tool of confrontation and invasion into the spaces of the 1%, as opposed to a device used for internal organizational communication, the human mic reproduces the movement whenever used.

For me, the first attention to the mic check as a protest tactic came in a post to the nettime mailing list dated Friday, November 11, 2011:

Dear nettimers,

it seems like the MIC CHECK, the ritualistic practice of amplifying a

speaker's voice in public space through call and response, is now

migrating from cities and squares to public (or semi-public) events held

by the authorities in various venues. Basically, protesters bring with

themselves a text and engage in call and response so as to overcome the

amplified voice of authority. A very simple tactic, but quite effective,

as you can see from the videos below.

 

The first powerful action that I know of was held at the Panel for

Education Policy in New York on October 26:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbmjMickJMA

 

Then Wisconsin governor Scott Walker (the union-buster) was mic-checked

at the Chicago's Union League Club on November 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oHRdiklTlU&feature=share

 

And yesterday Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann was

mic-checked by a group of students in Charleston, SC:

http://mountpleasant-sc.patch.com/articles/bachmann-talks-foreign-policy-at-yorktown#video-8403501

I can see this spreading so as to become one of the favorite forms of

contestation of the Occupy Movement. It would be interesting to know

whether someone is working on a social history of the Mic Check.

Enjoy,

Snafu

 

I have not worked on the said social history, but I have been keeping an inventory of incidents in which activists have “mic check’d” political opponents, corporate heads or representatives, or even the consumer public.

Now that more than two dozen such interventions have been carried out, recorded, and circulated via Youtube, from all parts of the US, it is time to make some distinctions on how these events went down, and how well the documentation communicates. In general, what I find interesting is the use of the open source tactic, combined with the lo-tech versatility in terms of where and when it is used. The recognizability of the form makes for a unified movement culture no matter the different kinds of content, even if the verbiage is very particular to that target, event, or locality. Precisely because the content is changeable, even more importantly, affect and emotion is largely unified across all the events. Righteous outrage, monopolized in idiotic form not so long ago by Tea Party-types, belongs to the left once again, along with a small and just right dose of true pain exposed (see the Lindsay Graham and the John Stumpf actions, below). Because the content is tailored to the particular event, the outrage is genuine, and after watching a few of these, that is really what gets communicated.

That said, through all these actions I can see the limits of the mic check as an effective action. The events featuring well-protected, well-practiced figures of national stature speaking in front of large audiences are more difficult to hijack. The action becomes a disruption rather than a takeover, an illustration of how unreachable, insulated, and repressive they really are. As with the mic checking of Karl Rove. On the other hand, functionaries who have no public role, who rarely get confronted by the 99%, who probably don’t even think of themselves as doing the work of the 1%, are less quick to defend themselves from the lectern, and thus are easier targets for a full human mic takeover.

It is difficult to generalize about the venues and spaces. One might think that the more elite the institution, the more tightly controlled the event space, and the quicker the demonstrators will be tossed out. Not true. Probably the most beautifully complete takeover of an event occurred at Princeton University—about as elite as it gets in the world of the 1%. There the mic text was based on the university’s motto and includes a searing self-critique of the school’s privileged campus culture. Three cheers. 

As the calendar year turns, the Occupy movement seems most likely to grow in at least two directions. First, that of housing activism, anti-eviction campaigns, and foreclosure occupations—ie defending and making our homes in a small and personal sense. And second, in the direction of stopping the Keystone pipeline, anti-fracking, and on other environmental fronts, ie defending and making our home on an ecosystemic level. If this be the case, then new elements of the Occupy culture are bound to emerge. But to send off 2011 and bring in a New Year of ever better and greater occupations, here are my annotated favorite mic check action videos. Visitors, comrades, and fellow citizens, enjoy.

9. Karl Rove Get Mic Check’d at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlko7nweb4k

Unlike the politicians he influences, Rove is not under any pressure to respond decorously. Even so, Rove proves himself unbalanced and quick to anger, leading a grouchy one-man counter chant. Apparently he still suffers from the instant defensiveness of being held responsible for two failed wars on foreign lands. If the mic check works sometimes only as a disruptor, this was a good one of those. Make them drag you out. Even though the action is not a successful takeover, the marriage of form (war at home) and content (wars abroad) satisfies.

8. Minnesotans Confront Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsybOu8VJ28

This group gets kicked out pretty fast by some pushy business school security workers. The intervention turns into a human mic rally outside the venue featuring an impressive young woman who tells her story of Wells Fargo’s treatment of her parents as homeowners who had never missed a payment for over twenty years, including for two years after they lost their jobs. It is heartbreaking. Also of note, John Stumpf may be the only person who has thus far been mic check’d at two separate events (the other in North Carolina).

7. Occupy El Paso Mic Checks Walmart on Black Friday, El Paso, Texas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9lamTknxnw

I for one did not know that there was an Occupy El Paso. I love the emphasis of this mic check: low pay, poor working conditions, and important everywhere but especially in El Paso, the poverty rates in the Hispanic population. And c’mon, to have the human mic take over the ambient media voices of an electronics department in a Walmart is just great on the face of it. The Occupy El Paso brigade looks to be an anarcho-youth posse, which always makes a corporate retail environment more interesting.

6. Chancellor Gets Mic Check’d at University of Oregon Statutory Faculty Meeting, Eugene, Oregon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uvA8u5WDww&feature=endscreen&NR=1

The mic check brigade makes a point specific to a UO governance and hiring controversy here, but links it to the wider trends of corporate culture invading the public universities. I love that the amplified voice of authority sounds both more hysterical and less understandable than the human mic. The activists remained seated, seem to have not been escorted out, and finished with a courteous “Thank you!” Also notable is the space, a major conference university basketball arena. Only 249 views of the video as of Xmas night? Let’s change that.

5. Senator Lindsay Graham Mic Check’d at Private Fundraiser, Washington DC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmEiREqvUMg

This is probably the most intimate confrontation of an elected public official in my portfolio of bookmarked videos. I hate to give it up to Lindsay Graham—he’s such a slime—but he went for the dialogue and that is way more than most of the politicians have done. Of course, he was essentially captive to the group as this intervention was something close to a genuine temporary occupation, so he did not have much choice. Along with the whole idea of crashing intimate gatherings to begin with, the personalized confrontations are an excellent strategy when the target is this close because it leaves the man no room for hiding behind platitudes. Compared to the videos listed here that have none, the basic text intro and outro are helpful. Activists ought to take the time to add them.

4. Gas Industry Event Mic Check’d at the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9jQXop_6RiU

Ah, here we go, a complete takeover. Industry flacks are defenseless in the medium sized lecture hall. Student activists deliver an uninterrupted speech calling out the industry for its lies, and condemning it for the environmental damage and cyclical economy the millenial generation refuses to accept. The speech seamlessly ends in a militant chant, to which the students march out. The text intros and outros are more informative than in #5 above. Excellent on all levels but one. I would have liked to hear the speech tie in some public university funding or governance issues.

3. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Mic Check’d at Union League Club, Chicago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oHRdiklTlU&feature=related

This was a contentious intervention on a couple of levels, but exemplary in its success. On the intramovement level, the action was designed and carried out by the labor activists of Stand Up! Chicago and the teachers’ union, but not by Occupy Chicago. Occupy Chicago activists refused on principle to buy the entrance tickets to this private event, but many Occupy partisans expressed solidarity by protesting Walker’s appearance outside the building. The activists inside also had to deal with a shouting battle against the governor’s regressive supporters, and the activists won. The video is edited down to an effective narrative and captioned in full for total communication. The language of the event’s human mic brings together Chicago city and Wisconsin state austerity politics, and even gives voice to the Occupy Chicago arrestees. The tag team lead voice technique is also used here to great tactical effect, seeming to confuse the security people. Finally, it is not just me who despises Governor Walker. Stand Up! Chicago knew that mic checking Walker would guarantee the video an audience, since there are now many thousands of Wisconsinites working to rid their state of him. The views stand at 320k-plus.

2. Occupy DC Mic Checks Big Insurance at Chamber of Commerce Event, Washington, DC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ1_Pebu5Tc

I love this first woman, playing lead voice while shooing away the big security guard giving her chase. Note that the tag teaming is performed to the prolonged maximum here. The language of the intervention is a great example of the conversation-changing spin of the Occupy movement. They don’t speak solely of big insurance as parasite, but specify Scott Serota’s bloated salary as proof of the broken healthcare system. And not least, this was apparently broadcast live on C-SPAN. Probably not a huge audience, but I am sure there were a lot of surprised viewers. The middle aged activists play right into the sympathies of what I imagine to be the middle aged and older viewership of C-SPAN. And the Chamber of Commerce? Talk about taking the intervention to the heart of the beast.

1. JP Morgan-Chase Mic Check’d at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ0J_HUsRaI

Another beautiful takeover, from the 1% to the 1%. The corporate shills never stand a chance. It cannot but tap at the heart when seeing the youth of the privileged class demanding that the institutions of the 1% live up to their billing as the standard bearers of service and stewardship. It is the beginning of their radicalization. And 49k views cannot be sneezed at.

 

the getaway that left questions

Walking home from the hardware store, I was lost in my own thoughts when a rising gutteral roar turned my head. My eyes settled on a remarkable scene unfolding in comical slow motion across the street from me. The first thing I saw was a young pale-faced man in a name-patch uniform lumbering across the lot of a BP gas station, apparently at a full sprint, but weighed down and misbalanced by a beer gut so big that he might have rolled faster than he could run. Then I saw what he was running after. Super loud but super slow, a rust-eaten nineties mufflerless Caprice with a young black man about two-thirds reclined behind the wheel lurched out of the lot, accelerating at a rate just barely faster than the man on foot. For another two seconds it was a contest, but the car gained in momentum what the belly lost. The chase went into the street but after another moment it was all over except for the cursing.

I deduced what had happened easily enough, but the meaning of the event is not so simple to determine. To my mind the story of this one event can be interpreted in at least three ways.

1)    It was a routine drive-off from the pump, the kind of loss-leading nuisance that vexes small retailers daily, the costs of which are built into the price of purchase.

2)    It was a counterproductive assertion of entitlement, feeding the perception in the secure spaces of white America of a growing and increasingly dangerous black and brown criminal underclass.

3)    It was an act of everyday resistance, a concrete, elemental, but banalized fuck you of the kind for which even the anti-capitalist activists of Occupy Wall Street essentially lack the guts.

These interpretations do not hold mutually exclusive purchase. In fact, all of them make sense simultaneously because of the subject positions in play, not only across the spectrum of positions but within them. Consider the players. First there is the station attendant. Then the driver/perpetrator. There was a white man watching from one of the other pumps. And there was me, witnessing from across the street. The multiple interpretations move across the complexities of and between these subject positions.

My first assumption was that the paying customer at the pump would tend toward interpretation number (2), but who knows; there are ostensibly anti-racist white leftists around here among whose questionable ideological merits include the capacity to rationalize even the most anti-social of behaviors on the part of African American persons. There was part of me that hoped the driver himself harbored a feeling going in the direction of number (3), but it was probably more like a perpetrator’s perspective on number (1); he was likely already thinking about how to get his next tank of gas as he pulled into traffic. He already had to seek out a non-pre-pay station for a fast one, and how far could he get on a single tank of gas, in a guzzler? For the station attendant thinking about his job—how to explain the incident to his boss, maybe having to fill out a theft report—number (1) might be the go-to interpretation. But the driver was an African American man, with all the stereotypical indicators of an inner city migrant, quite out of place in Middleton, Wisconsin, a town less than 2% African American. With an outsized pride of place, some residents of Middleton (adjacent to where I live in Madison) actually believe that Middleton is one of the country’s “best places to live,” as trumpeted in mainstream media reports. Would these factors of race and social exclusivity figure into the station attendant assigning number (2) as a meaning? 

Finally, the station was a BP. After feeling the frustration of both last year’s impotent post-Deepwater Horizon boycott campaign against BP stations, demonstrating that consumers really do not have the power to meaningfully punish transnational corporations, and of the current inability of the Occupy movement to exercise a power beyond changing the national conversation (which I acknowledge is huge, gratefully), I tended to see the episode as an example of number (3). I was actually glad to witness an action that could be described an unapologetic fuck you—after all the devastation (which is still inconclusively known, but constantly upped in estimation) in the Gulf of Mexico and BP’s proven impunity—finally! Inarticulate or not, politically meaningful or not, counterproductive as it was, for one short moment, in my mind I quietly saluted the driver.

But then I felt terrible afterward, for the knowledge that the tendency toward racial profiling in an area where even I, a Chinese American, routinely get stared at had just been fed the equivalent of an energy drink by this young man's action. Also for what such an act of disobedience says about the conundrum facing the Occupy movement. That is to say, significant parts of the Occupy movement must show that they can make progress in creatively addressing the system it critiques, opposes, and abandons, as one that is fundamentally racist. But the all-important African American street element, having suffered thirty years of massive incarceration and everyday police repression, is basically neither politically present nor self-consciously politicized, made up of individuals existing in survival mode, same as the driver of the Caprice.

Finally and not least, I felt the negativity of the continued erosion of trust that goes along with another business perhaps deciding to safeguard against theft through pre-pay means. On the other hand, why should the self-satisfied town of Middleton expect a different standard of public trust than what millions of people live with in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, and other places across the region? Another salute....

I witnessed a crime. Or was it an act of resistence?

These questions follow:

Is an interpretation informed by racism in any way a reasonable response?

If not, then how does one begin to address racism when those who racially profile their fellow citizens believe it reasonable?

What hope have we that the everyday daring of the most economically desperate become self-consciously politicized? 

How do those of us who are less daring than we need to be model ourselves on the driver and inflict a pain, no matter how small, measureable in units other than webpage hits?

 

psychedelic recall

“What’s going on in this country, it’s fascism, simple as that.”

The stranger who spoke those words to me had not attended and did not even know about the Saturday noontime rally on Capitol Square, at which there was an estimated crowd of 40,000 celebrating the recently launched campaign to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. On the square the spirits were high, and the consciousness evident. This was the massive and genuinely popular Wisconsin movement, again visibly churning to life. But the critical pronouncment above came neither from the rally stage nor from any of the scores of petition-gathering volunteers, nor from a protest sign. It came later that evening, from the mouth of the guy in his early 50s sitting next to me at the Furthur show.

“The people are distracted by this bullshit corporate media, which is all lies and pure bullshit. What’s that show, Three Men and a Half, or some shit. Fuckin’ bullshit. And in the meantime the rich are putting up a police state, and nobody fuckin’ notices. They’re defunding schools, keeping people stupid. It’s fascism!”

This man was pissed, possibly in despair, but clear-sighted. When I asked him what he did for a living, he admitted embarrassment and then proceeded to tell me all about the new gold rush of the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota, where he has been working as a contractor for six months at a time. He was embarrassed because, as he put it, “It’s a goddam free for all out there, 4 billion barrels of recoverable oil, maybe more, with no consideration for any kind of environmental responsibility. And it’s insulated. You don’t see any big oil company that you’d recognize. Only Halliburton, and a lot of companies like Halliburton that nobody’s every heard of. It’s fucked up. I hate it.”

And right then the band went into Throwing Stones.

Picture a bright blue ball, just spinning, spinnin free,
Dizzy with eternity.
Paint it with a skin of sky,
Brush in some clouds and sea,
Call it home for you and me.

This encounter did not happen at a political rally. Or did it? I spent $110 on two Furthur shows this weekend, outside Chicago and in Madison. Very un-critical art of me. Not radical.

It was great.

Not because the boys opened the party with a raging Sugar Magnolia and Chimenti wailed the keys on a tightly shuffling Stagger Lee in Friday’s first set, or because they hit the euphoric passages of The Eleven and St. Stephen with full, thunderous volume in the second set. And not because they offered up favorite cover Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues in Saturday night’s first set, or because the band pummeled Viola Lee Blues and Bobby crushed the vocals on Death Don’t Have No Mercy in the second set.

Those are some of the reasons the shows were excellent for Deadheads, something I most certainly am. But these nights were not merely about Dead fandom. They were about an old counterculture meeting a new moment of economic and cultural upheavel.

The thoughts that came to me during the shows had to do with if and how those nights connected with the times of the heterogenous psychedelic counterculture before “Deadhead” gained meaning as a defined subcultural identity, and which had emerged visibly already by the early and mid-70s. Having come into the scene in the age of the mega-Dead (from 1987 on—basically the years after Garcia’s diabetic coma), aesthetically speaking the ur-mythical early days had always felt rather remote, even with Captain Trips on stage. By then the concert experiences had become packaged and predictable, all the more so for having attained the status of a major concert draw. By the 90s, the band was falling apart in terms of internal communication and the concert experience ran on the fumes of cliches. I had tickets to two shows at The Palace in Auburn Hills, Michigan, in 1992. The first show was so flat that my friend and I gave our tickets to the second show to some “miracle”-seeking fans, who looked extra-pathetic given the sorry performance they were dying to see.

By contrast, the Furthur shows of this past weekend were meaningful on an intellectual and aesthetic level I have never felt before. The shows were great because they gave me time, space, and stimulation to think—and feel—through the political sensations of our day. To really stop and wonder about this cultural moment in America, in so many ways seeming to be on the edge of a cliff—or, more promisingly, on the take-off edge of a growth spurt of a kind. That Furthur remains a direct link to some of the most important American cultural experiments of the Sixties—open-ended, bravely good humored, at once literati and working class, astonishingly amateur, and selectively provincial—figured importantly in the experience.

My musing began with the questions, what does it mean for a few thousand people to gather for an evening party, many of them wigged out on mushrooms, Ecstasy, or acid, plus copious amounts of grass, shaking to music supplied by a fresh-sounding and expertly performing outfit directly descended from the original house band for the Acid Tests of forty-six years ago? What does it mean for this event to be happening in a time of unrest, persistent economic crisis, and a general deep questioning of values? Can a form of hedonistic revelry borne out of a turbulent and revolutionary time from a generation and a half ago maintain purchase on a measure of meaning that goes beyond a consumer experience—and maybe even opens doors to new pleasures and, therefore, desires? What are the changed structural circumstances, from then to now, that might limit the reach of the experience, or re-inscribe fresh meanings?

The discontents and desires out there, products of a generalized injustice, so personally felt and expressed in the America of 2011, had me reaching for the poignancy of forty year-old lyrics, my ears pulling them out of the mix. See the romantic indignation of Hunter’s losers and wharf rats.

Half of my life
I spent doin’ time for
some other fucker’s crime…

Measured in pure pleasure, the Rosemont show was the better of the two. It was a happy crowd, ready for a high energy party. The first set put us on notice. The band was tight. The unusually coherent second set, full of high points and seamless transitions, took me to the recordings of the early Seventies, the mindfully groovey playing I never got to hear in the late Grateful Dead. I could only think, so this is what this music is supposed to feel like. Music sung to the hassled longhairs of 1969, newly resonant in the contested space that is brutalized Occupy America, 2011. A basic message we can all relate to, from Ron Paul supporters to the drummers of Zucotti, and everbody who has been hassled post 9/11—which is to say, everybody. Get off our backs. Let us be. Stop telling us what to do.

Ooo, Freedom!

 Ooo, Liberty!

Oh-wo, leave me alone

I want to find my own way home

I expected the Madison show to have some discernible political vibe, simply because of the setting—there were sure to be recall campaign volunteers out, fans with buttons and Wisconsin solidarity t-shirts on. Appropriately, the music was darker than the previous night’s jolly ride, more bluesy, sadder songs, and hard driving rock. Less ecstatic.

Saturday night’s message seemed to be that nowadays, we are losers, all of us. But we can wallow together if we are fortunate enough to escape the various wars (dodging the draft then, evading the creditors now), score a ticket and a ride. And for an evening at least, a diversion of mind and body that might be more than only a diversion, with the right dosage and preparation, can still be had.

It used to be said that the Grateful Dead weren’t the best at what they do, they were they only ones who do what they do. That is no longer true, and hasn’t been for quite some time. The second generation jam bands, not to mention the modern psychedelia of techno tribes and orchestral pop, reached maturity long ago. Now the kids have a lot of choices. Consequently, the Madison show wasn’t a sellout. Not even close. The upper sections were were sparsely attended, mostly with people who wanted lots of space to “white person wiggle,” as Jim DeRogatis would say. But the floor was another story. It was full, with many from the upper reaches having come down. And here again, as I scanned the floor party, I wondered, is this what those 70s Winterland shows felt like—intimate and non-glamorous, and decidedly not the hottest ticket in town?

Like my discontented new friend—whom I never would have met at an activist event, or at Mess Hall, or through a critical art project—people are back to speaking and working against the system, and most importantly, hating it while having to make do in it. 

We used to play for silver, now we play for life;
And one's for sport and one's for blood at the point of a knife.
And now the die is shaken, now the die must fall.
There ain't a winner in the game, he don't go home with all.
Not with all.

For me, the guy made the occasion more than a party. Maybe not a political rally, but even better, a politicized reenactment of Deadhead social memory once in danger of being permanently overtaken by stylized consumerism and now returned to the truth of an aesthetic experience, a pre-enactment of times to come. We are going “furthur” indeed, both forward and back.

*lyrics from Throwing Stones, Wharf Rat, Liberty, and Jack Straw.

 

from wisconsin, on OWS and post-democracy

During the Great National Debt Ceiling (non-)Debate of 2011, when President Obama stood his ground after giving it away first, like many of my fellow Americans I called and emailed the offices of my US senator and my congressional representative. I urged my senator, the ultra-regressive Ron Johnson, to vote for the debt ceiling-increase plan, and I advised my congressperson, liberal Tammy Baldwin to vote against the House version of the bill. In the end, Ron Johnson blew off my opinion and voted against it. Tammy Baldwin honored it and voted against it. I sent an email to Senator Johnson expressing my disappointment, and an email to Ms. Baldwin applauding her for listening to her constituents. 

Did you get that? On my score card Johnson voted against it and did the wrong thing. Baldwin voted against it and did the right thing. Huh? 

The thinking was this: voting against the bill would be handing the regressives a victory in their effort to sabotage the US economy; this invented crisis was their method of blackmailing the American public into accepting draconian cuts to social spending. From this position, the conclusion was that Senator Johnson needed to hear from constituents opposed to his extreme regressive tendencies. So, call his office and lodge a tally in the Vote Yes column. 

For her part, Tammy Baldwin always needs encouragement to uphold the progressive standard she proudly advertises but frequently fails to deliver. As noted, President Obama gave away the ranch even before getting the Republicans to the table. No self-respecting defender of social priorities could possibly vote for such an insult. So, call her office and tell her to stand up to the assault by voting No.

In the end the bill passed, with the No votes cast by a bunch of Tea Party greenhorns who had gleefully put Speaker Boehner’s panties in a twist, and a cadre of progressives who couldn’t stomach the bill’s passage without lodging a principled refusal to take part in the charade. Nevermind that the Great (non-)Debate has already been forgotten, more or less, in just the several months between then and now. The absurdity of the actual vote—what those votes represented, and how complex positions mixed with ideological posturing cannot be reduced to a yes or no vote—not only remains, but is replayed every single time an ideologically written bill comes to the floor of the legislative chambers. Which is to say, now, all the time. 

Governing by lowest common denominator may work in periods of equilibrium, but dysfunction and the exacerbation of crises are all but guaranteed when a society deals with urgent challenges using the blunt tool of majority rule in an oligarchical representative democracy. Tactical voting and manipulative campaigning (was I secretly trying to get Senator Johnson to vote No?) against ever more preordained outcomes only makes the base level limitations more obvious. Though I tell the story above as a personal experience, it is a mass phenomenon, experienced by millions every day. The absurdity of the participatory experience can no longer mask the essential disenfranchisement that supports the cheap veneer of a functioning democracy. Though perhaps most acute in the US, with the unrestricted amounts of money now warping the electoral process beyond repair, the limits of democracy are felt in all variations of the parliamentary system, and in all presidential systems, the world over. Judged by the standards of effectively tackling the problems faced by societies, representative democracies as functioning systems are the exception, not the rule. 

*

As the existing system proves itself incapable of addressing the needs of ordinary people, an out of whack economy, and ecologies on the brink—and, most fundamentally, the crisis of political participation itself—other systems, embryonic and half-blind, emerge, wherever they can. The most evident emergence of a non-parliamentary system from recent times is the process at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street movement, that is, the direct democracy of the General Assembly. Owing much to the long history of group process identified with movements of social justice and egalitarianism, going back directly to the councils of Seattle, the cultures of consensus in the social experiments of the 60s and 70s, the workers assemblies of revolutionary Catalonia, the voteless decision making of the Quakers and nineteenth-century utopian societies, the GA presents the seed of the long term project, the one that builds different social relations through an extraparliamentary, non-representative system.     

It is the resolute refusal to avail itself of the existing democratic system—not just the political parties, but the system of representation as a whole—that marks Occupy Wall Street as a movement for a different world, as much or more than any of its critiques of finance capital, corruption, and corporate power. The General Assembly takes the direct vote and/or consensus process to a new level of proliferation by virtue of its visibility and performed display. For the six weeks of the Occupy movement at pretty much every Occupy site the GA has been held in the open, anyone can listen, and anyone can participate. The process has thus far resisted corruption and the concentration of power, and yet still allowed groups of people numbering in the hundreds and even single thousands to make concrete decisions. What is being created through the practice of daily assemblies (at some sites twice daily) are new political cultures and working models of direct democracy.

Philosopher Alain Badiou specifies the resonant radicalism of the Paris Commune precisely in its Committee’s rejection of, as he says, a parliamentary destiny. Based on his interpretation of March 18, 1871, it seems reasonable to wonder whether the Occupy movement might qualify as, in his word, an “event.” It is difficult to say, for two possible reasons. First, the historical reverberations that conclusively mark a political moment (a “site,” as he says—and OWS is already that, certainly) as an event only come later; it is too early for such reverberations even if the original moment over. The other, better reason may be that OWS is not over, and an event is never known as an event for its duration. Within that duration, time is different; seasons change, but the present holds still for as long as the insurgency authors life freshly, thereby disrupting the reproduction of daily life.

Unlike the territorial particularity of the Paris Commune, the Occupy movement has proliferated across geographic space and distance. With the arrests in Chicago, the bulldozing in Richmond, and above all (thus far) the brutality of Oakland, the mediated affective center of the movement pinballs around the nation, with each turn extending the movement. The longer the Occupy movement stays viable as an unpredictable process, the longer and broader the site gets stretched, facilitating its evolution toward an event. On the level of long term possiblity being considered here, the most dangerous of the counterforces is neither police repression nor eroding public sympathy, nor even the shrinking of public spaces suitable for occupation. Rather, it is the reassertion of normal processes of governance, ie a turn away from the GA and toward a formalized representative system, especially as some elements of the Occupy movement eventually move toward an institutionalized, sustainable form. 

*

When activist researcher Brian Holmes speaks of post-Fordism, he is careful to describe that condition as the new media, hyper commodified, globalized environment of complex subjectivities living in societies that at many key institutional and structural levels remain Fordist in origins, design, and essential operation. When theorist Xudong Zhang writes about the cultural politics of postsocialist China, he is describes the contradictions of an unshackled market economy and exploding middle class, learning to consume the material and the symbolic, overlaying a society whose socialist foundations are far from disappeared across an uneven geography. In other words, the “post-” phase of a society is about emergence, layering, and coexistence. The later system, paradigms, lifeways, and economies never wholly or cleanly supersede the earlier frame—especially when that earlier frame was itself a wholesale displacement of the pre-modern, as it was the case with both American Fordist industry and Chinese revolutionary socialism.

Similarly, OWS hints at the coming of the post-democratic. This is the long term potential of the movement. One can see it in Madison, where the GAs take place practically within shouting distance of the capitol building. The GA is a study in the amateur, what with its balky sound system, ramshackle info tables and grungy participants. Every additional day is a kind of existential victory. Meanwhile, the edifice of officaldom that is the Capitol silently screams permanence. For the rest of our lives and probably far beyond, these two systems of governance, decision making, and power distribution will coexist, with the post-democratic system growing, developing, and gaining traction wherever it can, and the democratic system continuing to monopolize official power but rotting from within.

For activists, the challenge is how to fight and function in both arenas at once. The nascent world must be nurtured, we must acculturate ourselves to the post-democratic social relations by participating, giving of ourselves to the emerging embryonic systems. At the same time at the very least we must defend against the brute attacks coming out of the existing democracy, wielded by the regressives with the stamp of state legitimacy. That means fighting battles on the terms of that system: using the legislative process and the elections. 

In Wisconsin, this contradictory position will be coming to a head in the next few months. The recall campaign targeting Governor Walker will be starting on November 15. The recall campaign will almost certainly achieve its goal of staging a new election, but the outcome of that election is far from a guaranteed victory. Republicans will do everything they can to win it, precisely because they understand that when they win, they will then have the final mark of legitimacy that they will need. The extremist agenda we have seen up until now will be nothing—nothing—compared to what will come should Walker win (or, more accurately, buy and steal) the recall election. Therefore, we must defend against this possibility by working for a Walker defeat in the election, but at the same time articulate our basic rejection of the election as anything but a sham exercise that confers zero legitimacy on whomever should win. There is no simple way to deliver this dual message, other than through our actions—to work in the electoral sphere (door knocking, fundraising, get out the youth and minority vote) and also to build up our local post-democratic initiatives (co-ops, GAs, experimental forms).

In Wisconsin, in Oakland, at OWS, and all the as yet unknown future sites, it is up to us to make this latest “post-” phase a reality. As with other post- phases, it is really not a choice, but simply where the decaying but extant structures leave us. We have the rest of our lives to do it, but the reasons for diving in are all right now.

 

another book event: madison

As I've mentioned before, I contributed a couple of texts to the book We Are Wisconsin–texts that originated here on this blog. One by me, and one co-written with Nicolas Lampert.

Editor/instigator Erica Sagrans has been pounding the pavement, getting the book out into the reading public. This weekend we'll have two events around the book, a discussion at Rainbow Bookstore on Saturday and then a panel at the UW Cinematheque on Sunday. The Sunday event is a part of the weekend's Wisconsin Book Festival. I'll be saying something at both events, along with some of the other writer/activists. Amazingly, this will be the first time that I will be in town for the festival since having moved to Madison after having missed it because of travel or whatever, for five consecutive years. 

These will be the first events for this book to take place in Wisconsin, and for that reason obviously they will produce a different and more meaningful atmosphere. Undoubtedly, these events will be high energy and participatory. Many if not all of those in attendance will have had some involvement in the Uprising and subsequent movement, including in the offshoot campaigns targeting politicians for recall, saving Badger Care, protecting the Penokee Hills, and so forth. In this sense, these events will likely include an organizing element and take on a social forum character.

See you there.

Here's a bit of the event copy from Erica: 

"We Are Wisconsin: The Wisconsin Uprising in the words of the activists, writers, and everyday Wisconsinites who made it happen" is a new collection that gives an up-close view of the Wisconsin struggle. This mix of essays, blog posts, and original writing looks at what happened, what it means, and what comes next—and includes the real-time, fast-paced story of the Capitol occupation as told through tweets from those who were on the inside.

In conjunction with the Wisconsin Book Festival, join us to celebrate the launch, talk about what's next for this movement, and hear from contributors including Andy Kroll from Mother Jones, Alex Hanna, Jenni Dye, Dan Wang, and editor Erica Sagrans. 

We'll also be showing short films on the protests produced by Shahin Izadi and Jason Nolen.

Sponsored by the Teaching Assistants' Association.

Books will be available for purchase.

http://www.wearewisconsinbook.com/
http://www.twitter.com/WeAreWIBook

Sunday, October 23 · 2:00pm - 4:00pm

UW-Madison Cinematheque 

4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Ave

Madison, WI