propositions press

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 dying art of hitchhiking

Traveling the Madison-Chicago expressway corridor is all about routine. Lots of people do it on a regular basis. In other words it can be very boring, as predictable as zipping across concrete at 70 mph can be.

So it was a treat when the other day I picked up a hitchhiker for the first time in quite a few years, as much for me as for him. This man was sitting on the side of the road at an entrance to a South Beloit truck stop with a sign that said I-39 South. He and his dog rode with me for about fifteen miles, to where our temporarily common paths diverged.

It had been years since I had given a lift to a thumb-traveler, mainly because I do not see hitchhikers very often anymore, even though it seems that I drive more frequently than ever. Hitchhiking is a mode of travel that seems to have declined markedly in the last fifteen or twenty years. You would think that with the rise in gas and automobile prices and unemployment among the young we would be seeing an uptick in hitching. But no. These days the culture of Fear, now as American as apple pie, trumps even the once-powerful national longing for adventure and the irresistable draw of a free ride. Instead of hitting the road and exploring this vast land our young men (not sure hitching was ever that imaginable for women) are sitting on couches, scared of what is over the horizon, brave enough only to do battle in make believe video worlds. Do we need any more evidence of the empire in decay? 

Turns out this fellow was a brother of the road, a modern day vagabond, what Hunter S. Thompson would have called a Road Person. John was his name, shabby but very polite, looking weary after ten years of hitching and tramping. The story he told me was that he had to reach Missouri to apply for a new ID card, the last state from which he’d had one issued. His wallet had been stolen a year earlier and since then he’d had nothing but trouble finding work and a stable living situation. Even when he could find the work (he had all his construction worker tools with him), he’d have trouble getting hired.

Starting out from Florida at age 21 and now 31, having gone through his young man’s period of deadhead drifting and numerous cross-country sojourns, John was ready to stay put for a while in Green Bay, where he’d found a steady job with a builder friend. He wants to get an apartment of his own but that was all on hold until he could show Somebody Who Matters a proper ID.

We spent our short time together trading thoughts about hitching rides, how things have changed since I hitched a few trips back in the 1980s. Together we bemoned the security state and what it has done to relations between strangers. He said what irks him the most are the strapping clean-cut white dudes driving pick-ups who never stop to let him catch a ride in the box. It would not bother him, he testified, except that he still gets a fair share of rides from little old women driving alone. I said it is ironic, but perhaps unsurprising. Sometimes the people who have the least reason to fear are the most fearful. 

John likes to draw. When I dropped him off he took the time to pull out a couple of his drawings, pieced together from notebook paper and rolled for travel. The first he calls Dragon and Harlot, based on an episode from the Book of Revelations. He explained to me that he was scared out of his wild phase through the harsher parts of the Bible.

The second is a Sponge Bob Jerry he did as a gift for his niece who is a young, post-Jerry deadhead. Imagine growing up with Jerry Garcia as a departed mythical figure but having Sponge Bob Square Pants as a very present television companion. Considered in that way, I suppose this picture makes sense.

So, where is all that dark matter of cultural production that Greg Sholette talks about? Some of it, at least, is on the side of the road, waiting for a ride. As soon as I pulled away, John went back into an undetectability in relation to me and most of modern America—he has no email address, phone number, street address, or cyberpresence. John is still in that other America, the one I passed through every now and then in younger years, but that has become largely invisible to not only the mainstream, but all of the mediated cultural spheres we live and work in–the art world, academia, creative industries, "alternative scenes." Though I feel for his exhaustion, I am gratified to know that it still exists.

 

cramming mrcc time

Between family commitments and work, I have less and less time to explore my world. These explorations—which sometimes involve doing nothing—were always a luxury, but one that, for artists, is practically a requirement of the work. Studio creations and new texts grow out of them. As departures from the routine, they fuel thought, feeling, vision. These days, if I have a rare opportunity to get out of the house for no particularly good reason, I grab it.

One of the best outings from my home in Madison is a one and half hour drive up US Highway 14, through Cross Plains, Spring Green, and Richland Center, to Viroqua. It makes for a terrific day trip, a car trip along a midwest radical culture corridor. But this time I had only a half day to spare. My friend Mike Koppa hosts a mid-morning radio show on the community radio station WDRT and he invited me to supply the records. I could make it for the show, a quick lunch and stroll, and then return to Madison before three. It was worth the drive, even through the dense morning fog of an abnormally warm mid-March Thursday.

Besides getting to enjoy the very impressive studios of WDRT, I caught up with Mike and all his goings on. New cabin under construction out at the Acres, new gig for his band, and with the spring coming, more stone lettering.

I also managed to get in a few minutes of browsing at Driftless Books. Luckily for me book hunter Eddy Nix recently hauled in an exceptionally deep collection of books on China, now filling a whole wall of cases in the front room, outside of the store proper. I took home two, The Workers of Tianjin, 1900-1949 by Gail Hershatter, and The Making of a Hinterland by Kenneth Pomeranz. The Pomeranz book caught my attention for two reasons. One, it is a study of western Shandong, the province of my ancestors that I periodically visit. And two, he writes about a region that historically had no name, but that he somehow identifies as possessing a geographical and historical coherence, enough to write a book about. Being interested in the slipperiness of regional definition, I want to find out more about his methodology.

It was also fun to see the Compass production A Call to Farms out on a display table of titles by area authors, especially knowing that the book is now very hard to get.

 

Because it was only a half day, I spent most of this trip in my car. But that was okay, too, because this was my first time out to the Driftless Area since late last summer, before the Walker recall campaign got underway. I was heartened to see a good number of anti-Walker signs along the way, including these sturdy constructions, which gave me reason to pull over for some quick pics.

I am refreshed, with ideas. I’ll make it out there again this year, I promise. Maybe with the family, next time.

 

 

 

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?

 

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

 

nyc: summit notes, before the event

I was conversing with an artist friend yesterday. At one point we talked about the Creative Time Summit 3 in New York, which I am on my way to now. He said that he’s been finding these kinds of gatherings less and less satisfying, ie conferences and symposia in which a bunch of socially engaged artists come together and discuss how and what “social engagement” means for art and artists. I understand where he’s coming from. When Daniel Tucker and Nato Thompson organized a one-day gathering in Chicago back in January of 2009, inviting what would be for any conference an impressive list of art activists, I skipped it. Maybe because I already knew a lot those folks, or it didn’t seem clear as to what the purpose of such a meeting would be. Many of the people already had working relationships with each other. And—now I’m remembering—at that time I just needed to stay home in Madison for a while and not travel. All in all, for me the event just felt kind of unnecessary.

I also recall people asking questions about the first Creative Time Summit, which took place in the fall of 2009. The presence of a few art star names in the program, while not exactly disappointing, did pose the question of what this event was aiming for, in terms of status, prestige, and constituency. That was my main question, understanding that those considerations can be quite practical. For others there was the hang-up about access, specifically the price and availability of tickets. This event charges more than a nominal fee for entry—some of the costs are definitely passed on to the audience. For a summit ostensibly about exactly those issues of democratic process, access, and structures, it did not seem out of line for art activists to wonder aloud. 

And when I heard about Open Engagement, I concluded that the deed had been done. Now we can say it. The collective force of artists, curators, teachers, writers, and others has successfully opened up a new genre, even though we haven’t made our society any more democratic or participatory. We have carved out a tiny niche in the resource-rich world of cultural production, a niche that seems to be going by the name of “social practice.” If, as Todd Gitlin likes to say, the Sixties generation took over the English departments but left the real power of legislating and governing to the Right, then we have achieved something, but haven’t even accumulated English-department levels of power. What we can do is organize periodic get-togethers, and even sponsor some of the travel.

Where is this all going? And what are these gatherings for? Based on how Summits 2 and 3 were designed, I can see that these questions have been considered by the Creative Time team. The presentations were streamed live for Summit 2 and archived—I don’t think they were streamed live the first time around. And the range of presenters for Summit 3 is noticeably wider, reaching out of the art school/art world and into social service and regionally identified people and projects. They also dropped the "Revolutions in Public Practice" tag that was used for years 1 and 2.

I certainly still have those questions. But here I am, participating in Summit 3. Why? 

Well, for one thing, it is hard to say no to Nato, the curator. His friendly force of personality—let’s call it that laid-back California soft persuasion I find irresistible—is perfect for the job of bringing lots of interesting people together, and making intense, urgent topics fun. Plus, not to be discounted, it's a mostly-paid for trip to New York. That could just be me, or an art thing; some people and groups who are farther from the art universe who were invited didn’t get on board. (That's another way of saying the spectrum of participants is not quite as wide as it was hoped to be.)

Beyond Nato and the personal pleasure of helping to realize his vision of what the Summit could be, there is the substantive reason I was invited: to say something about what happened in Wisconsin and especially Madison back in February and March, to a New York audience of artists, activists, and intellectuals. Yes, somebody has to do it—or more to the point, the Summit audience definitely needs to hear about it. And yes, bringing an account of the most important turn in American labor and left wing movement politics in the last three decades is a good reason for being here.

But then I’m back to the problem of these gatherings, on a structural level. There are about thirty presentations. Outside of the keynotes and performances, the slots are limited to eight minutes at the microphone. You can say a lot in eight minutes about one, precisely bounded thing. A single, titled art project, for example—which is what many of the presenters talk about. Try saying something compelling in eight minutes about an incredibly complex social and political movement, one that’s not finished and in fact continues to unfold even now, to an audience of people who might know a lot about it, or nothing at all. As is always the case with any kind of conference, the best conversations will happen outside of the program structure, in the socializing and informal encounters. But the presentation is the only time when the whole assemblage will get their ears stuffed with Wisconsin Uprising info. What am I or anybody speaking about the Wisconsin Uprising under such constraints supposed to say?

Even though I’ve rehearsed and have my talk pretty much down, I have no idea how it’ll come across. The points I make might be obvious or even stale to many, but completely baffling and without context for others. I guess all I can plead is, folks, go through my old blog posts on the Wisconsin Uprising and do some searches of your own. There is so much great reporting out there, tackling the million or so angles on our movment: John Nichols, Rebecca Kemble, Abe Sauer, Lane Hall/Lisa Moline, and others. And there you go—the last and best reason for being here: I’m at the Summit to get people intrigued, to open the doors of their curiosity about what the hell is happening in the Great Lakes states, and, hopefully, to direct people to the world of activism, movement analysis, and exemplary solidarity work that is our Wisconsin of the moment.

 

The Summit schedule is here.

I'm going on at around 12:30 PM or shortly thereafter. Catch it live here:

http://www.livestream.com/ 

 

 

 

 

from the we are wisconsin book release

Video documentation of the panel conversation from the book release event that happened the other night in Chicago, right here. Micah and Peter were terrific, check it out.

musings on the eve of the recall elections

So it seems that a group of mostly freshmen Representatives, with the quickest draw in the Tea Party midwest, Michele Bachmann, often playing their face, are hell-bent on acting the idiot’s role into reality. If one precondition for brute fascism is that the actors forget when to stop performing, based on these people we are about there. Even Speaker Boehner is fed up with them. Forcing President Obama to dance was all fun, but they made Boehner shimmy, too. The Speaker didn’t kiss all that ass for that many years only to be saddled with a non-compliant majority. The progressive Left, which came back into the electoral field after at least two decades of irrelevance with Obama’s winning coalition of 2008, has nowhere to go, other than cheering on the few sane voices in Congress ever allowed to reach the national media, ie Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich, and a few others. Anthony "the Torso" Weiner did not help the progressives with their visibility problems.

Besides bemoaning the smallness on display and dreading the real hurt that the working classes and all things public will suffer should this systemic dysfunction continue to play out as mindlessly as projected, for some there is the schadenfreude to be gathered while witnessing the establishment go into crisis-management mode. How many times does your average lefty intellectual use the word ‘crisis’? Me, I practically live on the word. For reasons of easing the alarmism, I always like to say that the crisis is not something that arrives, but rather is a time that we are living through. We have already gone over the environmental/economic edge in terms of guaranteed massive change, but it unfolds over decades, not weeks. It is not a news story. And yet here is exactly that, an alarm situation, a newsmedia play-by-play that has gotten the credit ratings agencies seriously involved and the markets spooked. All delivered by a bunch of pukes who rode into office only because the black people and the young people conveniently fell back into their traditional indifference, not showing up to vote in last year’s mid-term elections. Elections have consequences. That’s the new favorite line from conservatives around here, and they are right. For today’s conservatives, election victories are a readymade line absolving them of any and all responsibility, spoken in defense of both Republican intransgiance at the national level and their extremism here in Wisconsin.

So I’ve mentioned Wisconsin. What happened to the Wisconsin movement? No more demonstrations—did those people just disappear? What do hundreds of thousands of mobilized citizens do when the protests are over? Was it a purely foul-weather movement? No, it was not. The mobilization has dispersed throughout the state, leaving Madison a quietly angry summer town. Even though we know now that the Wisconsin Republicans were busy drawing up their ridiculous and transparently vindictative redistricting maps even then, by the time the weather had warmed I sensed that conservatives, too, were worn down by the fights that went through the frigid winter and into the muddy spring. But here we are, in the dog days of a lush and humid midwestern summer, re-energized for the August 9 elections, aka the ballot machine/creative counting event, again with chaotic events reverberating globally in the background, as in the winter and spring.

The last time I reported on the Uprising in any detail here, the movement was in re-group mode. The stolen election of April 5, for a key seat on the state Supreme Court, was still very fresh and a reminder of to what lengths the party of thievery will go to retain power. The impending early summer signing of Governor Walker’s bills was nothing to look forward to, and the recall elections seemed far off, with plenty of time still for the Republicans to pull more abusive moves from the Capitol. The mood was negative, but true demoralization was kept at bay by the constant reinjection of outrage, thanks to the regular pace of variously targeted attacks emanating from the offices of either the governor or state Senate Majority Leader Fitzgerald. From assaults on Wisconsin Panned Parenthood that will end up limiting affordable women’s health screening services, to a horribly conceived and written Voter ID law, to the attempts to open up a four-county stretch of northern Wisconsin less than thirty miles from Lake Superior to new mining, and more—the Wisconsin GOP guaranteed that people stayed motivated and involved. They supplied the opposition with fuel for anger, outstripping their own best weapon: despair and paralysis. Top Republicans had been confident that once the bill and budget were signed and implemented, the people of Wisconsin would forget all about the fight and accept the new reality. As many of us probably would have, had the attacks stopped then. But they didn’t. In northern Wisconsin, the fast-tracked move toward mining raised such concern that citizens organized quickly, broadly, and angrily--enough to apply the brakes. Such extraordinary motivation can be found across the state.

Not to be underestimated, the Governor continues his missteps, mostly due to blind spots. Walker mostly certainly has them, that much we have known ever since the “David Koch” prank call back in Week 2. What we have seen over the last several months is a politician who frequently cannot adjust, neither ideologically nor strategically. His failure to read the whole media landscape is encapsulated in one repeating scenario that has become an established pattern over at least five or six occasions since April. Either it is leaked or announced that Walker will make an appearance at a given site, visiting a company, a school, or a ribbon cutting ceremony. Word circulates through social media, with emphasis on the outrage inherent in this governor’s daring. A recurring theme is his daring to pretend all is fine, making pro forma celebratory and laudatory remarks on the site of a public institution or public works, while in reality cutting the legs out from under the public sphere.

For example, Walker tried to speak at the centennial celebration of Gateway Technical College—a public college facing massive difficulties after Walker passed his budget, cutting $30 million from the already barebones and affordable technical colleges. For this kind of insult, people turn out to boo at the top of their lungs. Each such appearance gives activists an occasion to make the negative connections between the Walker agenda and wherever the place his appearance happens to be. Protestors show up, footage of the demonstration gets returned to social media, and the best of the videos—the ones that capture anger, hurt, sincerity, cleverness, and commitment—get thousands of views. Seeing images of people birddogging Walker in a new location every two or three weeks has provided the mobilized with a constant new infusion of morale, motivation, and yes, entertainment.

 

  

And the best one, from a few days ago:

 

These repeated victories in the war of images filter through to the mass media and therefore have something to do with Walker’s declining approval ratings, helping to associate the carefully groomed and disciplined Walker brand with controversy, unhappiness, and general negativity. And yet the man continues to stake his career on the conventional playbook, believing that by making public appearances he is projecting normalcy, showing people that he is not afraid, not rattled, and will not deviate from his agenda. To the many tens of thousands now dedicated to opposing him, such images are read quite differently, as the picture of entrenched defiance against popular opinion, an ideologue so committed to his program that the term “weapon of mass destruction” reasonably applies. Walker’s minions, from Prosser to Hopper, also continue to screw up, undone by their own essential asshole-ness, apparently. On the day these scoundrels are turned out, we will have the Governor and his troops to thank in no small part.

The truth is, the Walker agenda may come to a halt, more or less, after tomorrow, August 9. That is the hope. Voters in six state senate districts will go to the polls to vote on their recalled Republican state senators, all of whom supported the Walker agenda. The opposition needs to capture at least three of those six seats and then hold their two Democrat seats in another two district elections a week later. This round of recalls, including the inevitable efforts concerning Walker himself, may ultimately require as many as 22 elections. Factor in the weaponization of redistricting, in which the current Repubican-controlled legislature deliberately mapping some of the Democrat challengers out of the districts that they would be representing should they win. That, and the massive inflow of national money, the possible disruptions (for example, a suspicious fire last week that destroyed a building that included the La Crosse office of We Are Wisconsin, a group coordinating the recall effort targeting Republican Dan Kapanke), and what we have is a state-level display of American democracy in a vital and almost electric, but heavily degraded condition, in what had been for decades one of the cleanest and most straightforward political systems out of the fifty states. 

With the movement’s attention and activity channeled into this avalanche of recall elections, we have another occasion to feel all the excitement, trepidation, and despair about electoral politics as a direction for a social movement. Instead of the usual voting vs. non-participation debate within leftist circles, I propose that we judge electoral politics on the basis of a different kind of efficacy. Today the exercise of political power is equally legitimate, compromised, and problematic at every level and in every mode. The reformism vs. radicalism debate is not relevant when, for the change Wisconsin and the world needs, voting is necessary but not sufficient but the same can be said of any other kind or instance of political engagement.

The alternative criterion is this: any particular exercise of democratic power gains in surplus political potential when it also unleashes a process of rewriting social relations. By this measure, most instances of electoral engagement stay very much within their pre-determined bounds of possibility, ie everybody from candidate to campaign manager to volunteer canvasser to voter has their strictly limited role to play. The same is true of most large and established activist organizations—ie the professionalized left and the non-profit industrial complex. In the context of an evolving social movement, however, in which a campaign for office is not entirely under the control of an official campaign, often some social creativity overflows the expected bounds. This has been true in the season of Wisconsin recall elections. Partly because each of the recalls was started as a citizen-initiated grassroots effort, these efforts have been far less conventional in their social aspects, with truly promising communities of social action appearing in some of the contested districts, out from the previously undifferentiated citizenry blob. Based on this criterion, for example, the Playground Legends—a grassroots squad doing creative voter education in the African American sections and documented confrontations in the ultra-conservative parts of Alberta Darling’s state senate district —is as valuable a contribution as the Capitol occupation was, as is the ongoing Solidarity Singalong. New social forms, all. If the Singalong and the related Heart Balloons Rotunda action still fall into the category of “cute activism,” when put under the duress of Wisconsin’s “cute” tyranny (see the story of the locally infamous Heart Balloon Assault of several weeks ago) they nonetheless have the effect of knitting people together in a new and meaningful sociality.

Yes, we need progressive legislation. The regressives put their money and organization into the electoral process because they know that nothing legitimizes like an electoral and consequently legislative veneer. And yes, we need to apply pressure through creative disruption, to carve out the political space for meaningful change. But, above all, our worlds need different social relations, cultures of new value systems built up in a political context. No matter what the results on Tuesday, no matter how they resonate nationally or don't, those of us who identify with the movement must continue our activism such that the organic and immanently energetic social formations that have come out of the Wisconsin Uprising continue to grow and proliferate.

 

 

summertime in walkerville

It is high summer in Madison, warm lakes, fireflies, and thunderstorms. 

And camping. Not in the woods, but on the sidewalks and patches of grass outside the Capitol.  

The Wisconsin Uprising lives. Which is saying a lot considering that after the real, meaningful, and historic victories of the first two to three weeks, we have suffered a string of defeats, each more serious than the last. But the movement is in a stage of metamorphasis, in a fragile state but trying to grow wings.

So let us review the political achievements of the Scott Walker regime, pretty much all of them concluded in the month of June. After recounts, at the very end of May the April 5 election for Supreme Court was finally certified in favor of the reactionary incumbent, David Prosser. The state’s Government Accountability Board declined to review the widely reported irregularities in the Waukesha County vote-counting process that made the difference in the election, despite problems during the recount that were documented by observers. The challenger declined to call for an investigation, instead opting to note the irregularities in a statement that called for improvements in the election system. Only about two weeks later the Supreme Court overturned the ruling by a Dane County judge that blocked the GOP-backed law stripping state workers of their collective bargaining rights, in a legally unconventional opinion blasted by the minority. The end of collective bargaining and payroll-deducted dues collection is now the law and will probably be upheld against further legal challenges. And then, as of last week, the budget, packed with deep cuts to nearly all state services (for example, BadgerCare, the state’s award-winning Medicaid program that serves about a million people), savaging anything progressive in particular (past provisions friendly to wind energy), and doling out special favors to private interests (the highway and road construction lobby), was passed with zero input from the Democrats and now waits to be signed by the governor.  

The curtain on this first drama has been drawn. Austerity is come to Wisconsin, dressed in the brown shirts of anti-abortion fanaticism and the Voter ID xenophobes, planned by the hard-scheming policy minds of ALEC, and sponsored by Koch Industries and the Cline Group.

On the left the consensus is emerging, just maybe, if the many movement analysis panels are to be believed, that the leadership of the unions was too timid. Of course the rank and file and grassroots knew this as it happened—on the night of March 9, to be exact, when Scott Walker essentially dared the workers to strike by ramming through his union-busting bill. As gratifying as it is to have one’s assessment affirmed even if long after the time of consequence, moving forward I am not convinced that the movement, at least as constituted in Madison, has the power for what it is going to take to halt the Walker regime, never mind undoing the damage. That is because the movement’s last remaining hope in the legislative arena is in the recall elections and our efforts on that front have been spotty to say the least.

Six sitting Republican and three Democratic state senators will defend their seats in an August 9 recall election. The money on the conservative side is already pouring in, as are the dirty tricks, the most widely publicized of which is their tactic of running fake Democrats to screw up the primary elections. Knowing this already, and having seen the Waukesha County electoral theft in plain sight, the Republicans will no doubt resort to any tactic that they can get away with. They know full well that a result short of a three-seat net gain for the Democrats will preserve not only their lock on Wisconsin government, but also crush the chances of a later recall campaign targeting Scott Walker (which cannot be filed until he’s been in office for a year).

In the meantime, the looming recall elections have the Republicans nervous enough to be piling on new policy and legislative initiatives at breakneck speed. There are too many proposed laws and regulations to go into here, but you can trust that they are nearly all uniformly hostile to any sort of public interest, and some are so extreme in their costly privatization schemes and ideological slants that even Republican voices are questioning them. The recall elections are all the more important as a result, but only as a negative achievement. In other words, if the Democrats do not gain the majority, the Republicans will trumpet their victory, call it an approval of the Walker agenda, and press forward even harder. If the Democrats win, they can only slow or stop the process, at best. Nonetheless, we must win. Youth and minorities will make the difference, which, again, given their rates of participation is anything but a safe proposition. 

So what to do? Helping with the dispersed recall campaigns in other parts of the state (election in seven weeks) is only the first of at least three shifts attention away from Madison. The second is finding meaningful ways to reach out in support of our comrades elsewhere, to return the favor to the people of the world who touched us back in February and March, whether in Spain, Greece, and Egypt. These gestures are more important than ever in the YouTube age.

 

But the most important pivot turns toward the looming battle over proposed new mining in northern Wisconsin. This is primary extraction, a proposed four-mile long dirty gash (inevitable leaching of sulfides, acids, and mercury) at the headwaters of the Bad River, which flows directly into Lake Superior, the largest and cleanest of the Great Lakes, the planet’s largest freshwater system. The formerly unprofitable levels of iron ore are now viewed as a pile of cash, an illusion driven by the appetite for steel in China and India—the main markets to which the taconite pellets will be shipped. Some of it would probably end up being unloaded in Tianjin.

The battle will bundle together a host of constituencies, pitting Gogebic Taconite and their hired representatives (GTAC, as they are known, was a big out-of-state donor to Scott Walker and expect to benefit from industry-friendly streamlining of regulations that are currently some of the toughest in the nation) against the citizens of the progressive strongholds of Ashland, Bayfield, and Iron counties, along with the Bad Water Band of the Lake Superior Ojibwe, whose traditional wild rice harvesting beds lie downstream from the lands eyed by GTAC—all in the context of lost American industry, globalization, and new BRIC economic power. This federally recognized band, though small in numbers, includes veterans from the Walleye Wars of the 80s and the Crandon Mine campaign of the 90s, both of which were successfully fought by grassroots anti-racist and anti-corporate coalitions. In the two campaigns, activists led by indigenous defenders of the land performed direct actions that confronted racist groups on the ground, stopped industrial equipment on the roads and tracks, and engaged legislative and media fronts simultaneously. In meetings, in letters to the editor, on message boards, references are already being made to both struggles. If the efforts to begin mining continue to advance, then the north woods is where colorful midwestern radicalism will make itself felt again. With the mining interests attempting to divide public opinion by promising jobs (first 700, then inflating that number to 2800–who believes them?), the position of labor will be interesting to watch. I’m not very hopeful, but what a time and place for labor to break its conservativism in relation to environmental politics. If there ever were an occasion to gang up on the common enemy, this would be it.

*

After the budget was passed last week, activists struck the camp. The square is mostly quiet, the Capitol will be reopened without metal detectors in about a week.

Walkerville is no more. Everywhere is Walkerville.

 

before i leave

I am wrapping up my teaching duties for the semester; summer is around the corner. True to the short springs of the upper midwest, it’s about to get warm after only week or two of sixty-degree weather. Up until late April spring had been all chilly rain and occasional flurries, as cold to the bones and body as the frosty air of winter proper. The shock of summer heat will be made greater by travel. A week from now I will be in Beijing, under the blazing, hazy sun of their hot season. It will be my eighth trip to China. Each time the experience becomes more familiar, but I don’t think it will ever feel routine. Maybe because the older I get the more I feel rooted to the midwest of my birth, youth, and adulthood, going to China will never feel like a casual trip, even as I spend more time there. Perhaps the more I live in both places, the more I understand the distance between them. Getting ready for a trip to the other side of the planet is a good time recap some recent art experiences. 

I made it to the Wisconsin Labor: A Contemporary Portrait show at the Watrous. It was full of photographic images and some video that faithfully, respectfully, and affectionately document the people who perform the work that makes Wisconsin. Workers in the agricultural, retail, hospitality, tourism, manufacturing and other sectors besides, are represented, with the subjects mostly shown in their occupational environment. 

But I left a tiny bit disappointed. The show could have and, really, should have been more ambitious in its concept. Of course, there is the increased urgency of addressing ideas having to do with workers’ rights because of Wisconsin’s current political climate—ie Scott Walker’s all-out neoliberal assault on all things public. But obviously the timing of the show cannot be planned in relation to a spontaneous social movement. So it is not that. 

Rather, I wished that the exhibition concept incorporated some analysis of Wisconsin’s economic system as it exists in the region and world. Maybe that can’t happen, since it would mean addressing the logics of globalization. But this is the problem: the concept and reality of both Wisconsin as an easily defined place, and labor as a self-evident category of human activity, are no longer the stable realities they were one or two generations ago. How, for example, is the work of those who live in Wisconsin but work a job across a state line to be categorized? Are we not “Wisconsin” labor? For that matter, what about the workers who make all the stuff that is imported into Wisconsin? What about the call center employees in India performing customer service for a Wisconsin company? What about the financiers and traders on Wall Street or in Dubai who invest in Wisconsin mortgages? Are they not Wisconsin labor? To me, the most glaring oversight on the labor side, for that matter, was the absence of the unemployed, especially those in the job hunt. Looking for work, it is often said, is a full time job in itself. I see this at the public library all the time—jobless folks working on applications, resumes, cover letters, and browsing the jobs listings over and over. 

Also there is the question of our present Great Recession, which as many of the more forthright social scientists will admit is actually a depression. This was hardly touched on in the show, but it defines the economics of all but the wealthiest households these days, and most certainly shapes the lifes of the working people represented in the show. To me, this is a picture of Wisconsin labor:

 

That's my favorite local music store, Good ‘n’ Loud, closed down due to a weak economy.

Deeper still, how about this for a picture of Wisconsin (or “Michigan,” or “California,” or “American” labor:

 

Automation, at the most quotidian level, rendering redundant a candy store or snack counter worker. These conveniences are so deeply naturalized by now that we hardly think of them as part of an economic logic that makes human beings unnecessary. Only the booths where a parking lot attendant once sat reminds us that unemployment is built into our economy’s tendency toward real and imagined increases in efficiency. 

I also caught the MDW Fair in Chicago. I browsed the last two hours of the Sunday it was open. Even though it was near to closing time, the energy was great, and as expected delivered a social experience as much as an art experience. This was an event organized by and for Chicago, and damn the big shot outsider buyers courted by Art Chicago and pretty much all the standard commercial fairs of other cities–that seemed to be the attitude, especially considering that scheduling it for only one weekend later would have brought it into direct comparison with Art Chicago and Next (favorably, is what most people I talked to felt). The organizers—Threewalls, Roots & Culture, and Public Media Institute—did an excellent job of bringing on board every grassroots initiative, small art publisher or bookstory, apartment gallery, non-commercial space, oddball collective in Chicago, and even some local art school departments. 

The bottom floor of the Geo Lofts was an open floor display of various sculptures and constructed projects. For me the highlight was getting to see Hui-min Tsen and James Barry’s Mt. Baldy Expedition boat, finally:

 

The second floor was all booths, tables, and exhibition walls. Regional Relationships, AREA Chicago, and Half Letter Press were all there, along with some cool things and people I hadn’t known of before. Like this:

 You know I'm a sucker for all things Aldi.

I was very happy (!) to see the Happy Collaborationists (a group of Columbia College alumni making fun things happen around town, including Anna, pictured below), a bizarre and super engaging floor arrangement in the Green Gallery booth, and the free-standing kiosk of the Silver Galleon Press. There were public discussions all day on Saturday and Sunday on the third floor, along with the first public display of the Threewalls CSA project. There was also a small room with a display of Dorchester Project plans, a Hyde Park Art Center exhibition space, and Philip von Zweck’s untitled free editioning project to which I was thrilled to contribute a drawing.

All in all,
satisfying. That’s saying a lot for an art fair.