Solidarity with Oakland
It was in a sense a great action — we marched entirely against traffic — the cop cars seemed to be driving around with some stress. But after we pulled down the fence to Dilworth, I was really disappointed. It seemed like a lot of Philly occupiers were chickenshits — standing not even on the street we had taken, but on the sidewalk, terrified to stand in Dilworth Plaza with those 20 or so of us who did. I was disappointed. I ended up leaving — don’t want to get arrested again, just as some cops started getting in people’s faces. I yelled “Fuck you, pigs” as I walked down to the subway. Just heard two were arrested. Fuck.
shitty times
This weekend was pretty bad. It was nice helping Lxxx and Mxxxxx make a birthday cake for my mum, but I felt rotten most of the time. Not sure what is up. In a sense Occupy Philly has been a boon to me personally, forgetting for a moment the excitement of participating in a larger scale anarchist project. And the Shoe is, as always, my second family. But I don’t know, I am feeling things that are difficult to sort out. Am I overwhelmed? Don’t know. I do know that I was desperate, as OP went on, to forge real relationships with people. And I’m not sure that I have. I mean, I have, but I don’t know that they exist or will ever exist outside the circle of occupy. I don’t see Occupy ending, which is exciting as all hell, but at the same time, it’s hard to see my growing with it. I feel like a cog or something, like I don’t contribute anything but my body and solidarity. I still don’t have ideas of my own, which is NOT to say I can’t think for myself. I can do that, and continue to do it. But ever since we’ve gone off site, I’ve felt increasingly like a piece of shit. I miss meetings with some frequency. When I try to open up about my shit, other people also start opening up about their shit, which should be good, but there are just so many people around that it doesn’t create any fucking sense of shared struggle, or empathy, or anything it should. I still feel like a loser. With no plans. With no skills. Who fades into the sea, even a sea of protestors.
This weekend, I just wanted to curl up and disappear.
holiday
Happy Christmas for all of those of you who celebrate it. I had the distinct pleasure of spending my day with my parents and my brother and his family (including a nephew and niece whom I adore). Everyone else has passed out, and I am awake… Wondering whether to go back to Philadelphia this week, as a friend from NYC has said he has a car and might drive down to see me. That really is reason enough, I think. The brain has been doing better, though consistently exhausted and not really able to come up with ideas of its own…
Oh, and can you say, RECORD PLAYER!!!!!!!
Event organized by Gangs in Blue filmmakers!
There is a Stop the Violence free community feast on July 8. Things kick off at 4 pm at 1652 Ridge Avenue. This event will be focusing on the community becoming self-sufficient (from the the cops anyway), and seems very promising to me. I’ll be making an effort to be there, and so should all anti-racists in Philly.
Gangs in Blue
Yesterday I watched Gangs in Blue, and tears were running down my face. My tears were not only because as privileged as I am, I know someone in Philadelphia who has been a victim of 1) police brutality, and 2) ongoing police harassment. They also fell because what I witnessed in the film did not particularly surprise me. Everyone in this city knows about the police. But somehow, nothing changes. The friend, Angel, who was brutalized, feels utterly helpless, and fearful in his own neighborhood, all because his skin is the wrong color (brown – Angel is Puerto Rican). In the case of brutality, he was driving three blocks to check on his elderly mother when a police cruiser signaled him to stop. He pulled over immediately. He was asked to get out of the car and he did. The policeman moved toward him and shoved him. Angel put his arms up to protect himself. That movement was deemed resistance. He was cuffed, punched, and brought into the unlit, un-video-taped back door of the station. There he was beaten by three police officers, while another looked on. He was beaten so badly that his partner Barbara, at that point fretting at home at the length of his absence, first heard of him again via a call from Hahnemann Hospital asking her to retrieve him. The judge threw out that case, angering the police further. A few weeks later, Angel and a friend were cleaning up the trash in the alley that construction workers had left rather rudely. It began to rain hard, and Angel waved his friend into Barbara’s car, which doesn’t run but sits idle in the alley. Sitting in the car, the two friends opened a six-pack of beer. The police pulled up behind, and proceeded to arrest Angel and charge him with Driving Under the Influence because he was sitting in the driver’s seat. Angel tried to reason with them, saying, “The keys aren’t in the car, and even if they were, this car doesn’t run!” The cops didn’t care. Again, the case was eventually thrown out. A few weeks after this, Angel was underneath a friend’s car helping him, as the friend leaned under the hood. A police cruiser pulled up and yelled to the friend with his head under the hood, “You, get out here! … Oh, we thought you were that other guy.” I can only imagine how frightened Angel, feet away, must have felt. Though the judges threw out all the charges against him, Angel and Barbara were forced to spend significant sums on legal representation, and fear of harassment is now simply a part of Angel’s life. Sadly, this tale is one of the least horrendous. How can our city not face this problem? It’s an easy answer: racism.
Insomnia again
So I can’t sleep, and worse than that, I’m feeling rather angry. Odds are it’s at myself, as I just keep saying (I would scream but I have a downstairs neighbor to think about), gritting my teeth, “FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU.” What part of myself is another question. Invariably this is followed by a more pitiable “I want to go home,” which I think I’ve written about earlier. I sort of want to punch a hole in the wall. I suppose I feel less depressed these days, but just as paralyzed. I talked to Marc earlier about how I wonder in fear whether “this is as good as it’s going to get,” because it isn’t good enough. I still don’t have a quick, sharp mind. For example, I left Marc’s office around 4:15, and somehow didn’t remember to go to the pharmacy with my script until 11:00 pm. Where they didn’t have any, and couldn’t give me any advice as to who might. Not that it would have mattered, because they are the only 24 hour pharmacy of which I know. So now I have no opiates for tomorrow (well, I have half a pill, because I didn’t take it tonight) and the sense that pharmacies are having a hard time getting it AGAIN. Half the point is, why did it take me until eleven fucking o’clock to remember I had this very important script to fill? Well, the answer is because my mind is a fucking sieve.
So I’m not near catatonic in pain anymore. But I’m still pretty fucking useless. And I still can’t imagine myself in the world in any meaningful way. My friends don’t need me. Sometimes I think they’re surprised when they hear from me, like they’ve forgotten about me. I suppose my family does “need me,” but just because they love me. I’m impatient — if I can get this much better, what the fuck is wrong with me that I can’t actually get Better? What do I hate? My brain — a brain that is rather remarkable in finding ways to outwit drug treatment, laugh darkly in the face of ECT, and, I fear, DBS eventually. What good is that kind of remarkable?
Replacing clothing allowance for foster kids with cards to Salvation Army
My super-accomplished friend Chris retweeted Rachel Maddow’s disbelieving response to the following story: http://is.gd/4vDqXE. I too am upset by this, but I think for different reasons. My problem is with the STATE telling foster kids how to spend their pittance, especially at a thoroughly Christian org (Salvy Army), though apparently the “cards” can be used at Goodwill and other thrift shops. Now, there’s a difference between the State telling people they MUST, and people discovering for themselves that they can. The difference is between oppression and knowledge. But I can’t help thinking that some people’s rancor at this issue may in fact stem from some weird bourgeois un-conscience. As if what strips people of their dignity isn’t that they’re told they have to use this shop or that one, but that it’s this THRIFT SHOP or that one. Like it’s undignified to shop at thrift shops. That the oppression isn’t in the control, but in the non-bourgy nature of the control. And that really fucking pisses me off. In one way this is a minor point — I think shopping at thrift stores is awesome, you can get great clothes for cheap that, while they probably were made in a sweatshop, weren’t made in one for you. And, you’re recycling, lessening the huge amounts of waste that our consumer culture generates hourly. If you ask me, there’s nothing inherently dignified in the Bourg.
Where to start
After arriving near the end of the weekly Shoe meeting (Frack!), I attended tonight’s event, which was excellent. Essentially, it was a couple of socialist professors from the CUNY system talking about the rise of the right — both in the US and in Europe, about the decay/demoralization of the left, and about where anti-capitalists should go from here. Quite interestingly, the far right in Europe, particularly in Italy, relies not on an organized, mobilized population, but on passivity and general acceptance of its “positions” (racism, xenophobia being paramount). In the US, the far right tea party has been used by the right to mobilize voters, but its positions, particularly on shutting down government and ending immigration, are anathema to the capitalist class, who depend on both the state and the cheap, flexible labor from immigration to make their billions. Indeed, it is they who are trying to reign in the tea party members of Congress.
So where do we go from here? Rebuilding a working class movement, in whatever tiny steps we can. Supporting every strike, every rank and file action, without ever feeling the need to deal with the official labor leaders, who are deeply implicated in the weakening of their own movement through their cozy and hapless relationship with the Democratic party, a party that embraces neoliberalism and global capitalism. Rebuilding, frustratingly slowly of course, a sense of working class consciousness, of solidarity. And, of course, recognizing wholly justified working class anger, saluting it, and allowing it to take a more radical course than union leaders (Gompersians all) would like.
It was hardly an idealistic evening. But there was/is something inspiring about realizing that to win the war, which seems so unwinnable, you must fight every teeny tiny battle, and engaging in those teeny tiny battles is the most important thing you can possibly do.
Post-op
I forgot how annoying life is post-op. I remembered the soreness, but not the inability to carry anything or ride a bike. Perhaps I am merely blaming my sutures — evil sutures! — for the fact that things have taken a little dip. I don’t know why they have: is it the change in voltage, is my fucked up brain too smart even for cycling DBS? I still can’t remember anything. I didn’t do my peer review yesterday for my near-humourless class. I am worried about David but helpless. Sometimes I still want to give up, despite the distance traveled blah blah blah. No, that doesn’t mean I’m going to off myself. It just means that this isn’t good enough, and I’m afraid that this is as good as it is ever going to get. Feeling unhappy but not entirely shattered, lost, confused, scatterbrained, and as if I will never accomplish anything meaningful in this life. Yes, my definition of meaningful has changed. That does not account, though, for my frustration or alienation from trying to be a person.
sticksinthehead 
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