It’s just plain neat how the way we spend our time–our daily practices, as somatics folks like to talk about it–can totally affect our consciousness and our mood.

Like I said recently, I spent almost the entire weekend in bed, watching TV and playing video games. Essentially, I spent the weekend numbed out. When difficult ideas surfaced in my mind, or stresses began to appear, I would just dive further, surfing the web on my laptop while I watched TV. Playing cellphone games while listening to podcasts. Total sensory overload as a way to shut out feelings as well as the physical pain of my sprained foot and burned finger (small cooking accident).

Very well, but something interesting happened when I chose to turn off Friday Night Lights and try my hand at blogging again. That decision woke me up. It woke my feelings and intellect up! Not only was I reflecting on the US Social Forum, but my mind just started working through all sorts of discourses, project ideas, potential blog posts…including this one. I can’t really emphasize how different I felt. I almost felt like a different person entirely…myself. Exhilarating.

But you open up the flood, and it really comes flooding. I woke up this morning and the first thing I did was turn on some music. Tracy Chapman, singing my soul. The tears came quickly. That when I let myself think and feel, I’ve gotta think about the choices I’ve made, the pressures I feel, a grown man dying in Guatemala and growing Guatemalan young people depressed at the structural walls overshadowing them. The father I may become soon enough, and how I don’t want to be the fathers I’ve seen. How lost I feel when I think about life post-SYPP. Things I’ve mostly written about here before. What mistakes have I made? How badly have I strayed from the path I wanted? How wrong was I about what this life would hold for me?

But also, the flood of the beautiful, the wonderful: how fascinating it is the level that babies’ brains have to work to learn language, and how dazzling it is all the new ideas and poetry that linguistic structures allow; how stunning it is to watch people in my life learn, grow, change…watching younger cousins and ex-students and my own family members…ooh what a privilege it is to participate in; and how utterly overwhelming, how dwarfed I feel by that long train of people before me who have chosen to keep believing in the struggle for the beautiful and fair. I was just so, so happy to feel bathed in this, to feel the wonder of this little world of ours.

You know, maybe this is Bipolar Disorder (if that’s even real)…biochemical cycles going from the numbness and depression to the frantic and awed. But I don’t think so. I think I did make a choice last night to think and feel and reflect…and I think this happiness is really just me connecting to myself again, like coming back to an old friend. And that connection had me dancing alone in my bedroom with a sprained ankle this morning, holding my laptop like a guitar and belting out Christian pop tunes…with feeling.

That was pretty great.

And tonight I finally saw Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, and it’s got me thinking even more. If you are a radical in the U.S., I’m sorry, but I think you have to see it. Not because it’s so super good or anything, but because I think it’s important. A major media presence is repeatedly claiming that capitalism is a deep social evil. Not just once. But repeatedly. Talking with priests about it. Criticizing propaganda that teaches to the contrary. And pretty much outright encouraging folks to look more into socialism. That is a major cultural happening. As we can see, the red scare is finally, perhaps deeply breaking, particularly among young people. Thanks, Mike, for helping out.

But what’s really interesting to me about the movie is thinking about anarchist responses to it, and to the crisis and community reactions to the crisis that the movie is talking about. I’m noticing a reluctance among some anarchist I know to really delve into these more straightforward economic issues like foreclosures, layoffs, etc. Maybe it’s a fear of staying in that class reductionist framework of organizing. Or perhaps they worry about just jumping in to the “issue of the day” like the Socialist parties do, thus exploiting people in their struggles. These are both good things to be wary of, but I think we do have to admit that this is an important historical moment to be talking and organizing around the economy. In new and intersectional ways, of course, but in ways that speak clearly and elegantly about the class struggle that really does exist.

I’m thinking hard about what I’d like our Seattle branch to be organizing around, and I’m enjoying it. Right now I’m leaning towards something related more explicitly to the economy, but maybe I’ll shift elsewhere tomorrow. I’m not sure. Hopefully I’ll come back soon and write more about it here…it’ll keep my energy up!

And this week we just had our Seattle branch meeting, and we came to the agreement that it’s time for us to engage in a common project, or a common focus, or even in a common campaign. You know, common action. For a long time, we’ve been doing a lot of internal and structural work. We’ve been doing a lot of consciousness raising events in the community that have built quite a bit of goodwill with fellow radical and progressive groups in the region. And now it looks like we’re ready for a new level of organizing together. Yes!

But the question is what? And how? What is the most valuable type of political struggle for organized anarchists to be doing? How does it differ from organizing that is done by groups from other political tendencies? And if it’s not different, then what is the point of even labeling it as anarchist? These are questions we have discussed frequently in our branch and in our whole organization, but now it’s time to try putting some of those concepts to the test.

Within our particular tendency of anarchism, there is a lot of talk about “social insertion” within mass struggles. That is, engaging humbly and fully within non-anarchist spaces of struggle, so that anarchism’s very practical and principled ideas can be put to use directly at the grassroots. I agree with this tendency, except I have a lot of questions about this notion of “mass struggle.” What is mass struggle in contemporary U.S. society? The anti-war movement? The climate change reform movement? Anti-austerity movements within poor communities? Obama supporters and the netroots? It’s tricky. What if the greatest political potential, the potential for really creative and innovative action, doesn’t exist within current “mass struggles?” Do we hold off on those ideas because they didn’t emerge from a grassroots, non-anarchist base? Or is that kind of idea a fetishization and exotification of “ordinary” people, and their historical destiny to spontaneously spin mass movements out of their own initiative? What about the fact that most of the “mass struggles” we see in U.S. society are actually the products of highly professionalized and well-funded reform groups that are already geared heavily toward policy advocacy and engagement with people in power? What is the anarchist contribution there? There are lots of smart people debating these ideas, as always, and I think it’ll do me some good to start reading more in the radical section of my personal library again…no more liberal progressive mish-mush for awhile, Jeremy.

We won’t have a decision for a little while, and then from there the actual planning and development of the project will take even longer, but even these initial brainstorming conversations are invigorating. Do I finally get to actually try out some of my long-held ideas about praxis, community education, and dual power? It’s a like a dream come true.

And I can tell you now, I have my own ideas unfolding out of the cracks of my mind, and forming into some pretty cool visions. Hopefully I’ll take the time to work out some of those ideas here.

I wanted to share this with folks because on this blog, but even more in emailing with some blog readers, I’ve been thinking a lot about questions of identity-based politics and identity-based spaces within revolutionary politics. I do not think that the INCITE! paper reflects all of my current thinking about either the organization or the larger questions, but I do think it is provocative.

In our class the other day we were having a discussion about the N-word and who is allowed to say it, and who isn’t. In the class, some of our students showed a clip from a documentary called “The N-Word,” and in it Chris Rock makes an observation about how white people are often so intent on their right to say it, precisely BECAUSE it is the one thing that white people are not allowed to say. I think the point holds so much truth, and I think it’s just one example of entitlement around privilege (think also about men demanding, every year, to march in some Take Back The Night! marches…I know that it’s different from the N-word, especially thinking about trans folks and about male survivors of sexual violence, but among some males I think there is an entitlement thing going on around the demand to march). I recognized then in writing the piece and now still that entitlement plays a part in my own reflections on INCITE!, but I really do think my thinking and feelings go deeper than that in this case. I genuinely want to be a part of a large revolutionary organization with deep, complex anti-authoritarian politics. I believe my radical work would be so much stronger if it was linked in a structure with other like minded folks. It makes me sad that I don’t have that kind of group right now.

I have a right to that sadness, while I also have the responsibility to join with folks to do something about it…

…which means MARCHING INTO INCITE! MEETINGS AND DEMANDING THAT THEY LET ME JOIN!!! SI SE PUEDE, SI SE PUEDE!!!…

…no, of course not. It means organizing with other anti-racist white folks, other feminist men, etc…to try to build supporting radical structures that are actually worth the time and energy of groups like INCITE! to work with us. The burden is on the privileged to build new organizing structures, and to transcend old, unworkable models of “allyship” and “solidarity.”

…Which is something I’ll be blogging further about in coming days. In the meantime, check out the piece in the writing section.

PS Had another staff meeting today. Things are still a big mess. All bets are off. The decision has been postponed until next Tuesday. I’m so sick of waiting…I’m just moving forward as if we don’t have a job there, and maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised. It’s more important to work with the students and help them build their initiative and structures until the end of the year. And so that’s what we’ll keep doing.

Before Evo was elected, I was following the Bolivian movements daily, but then I kind of shifted gears and just looked for what Evo and his government have been doing, with less attention to the movements. That is, I shifted my attention up the hierarchy. This was a mistake, and now I feel very disconnected from the changes being made in that country. This is especially sad because of the uniquely indigenous characteristics of Bolivia and its movements, which are important in themselves, but which are also important for one of the other Latin American countries with a majority indigenous population: Guatemala.

The idea of de-constructing and re-constructing a country away from 500 year old colonial roots is a massive one. I imagine that the debates happening in Bolivia are really profound and rich. The problem is that unlike with Venezuela, I don’t know what the good websites are. Perhaps I need to do some research.

Two of them are works of revolutionary theory. The other two are attempts to express that theory in more creative, visionary ways (that is, they are fiction). I’m proud of all of them, with their flaws and gaps and all that.

To be honest, I’m thinking about maybe trying to do something more with some of these pieces. Not like a book, but at least trying to publish these as articles or zines…with some modifications, of course. I’d be interested to know what people think about that.

But seriously…the last two pieces are actually pretty fun reads, in my opinion, so I suggest checking them out.

Love you…and please be kind with any constructive criticism…because I am SUPER-INSECURE about my writing. Not defensive, but insecure.

P.S. If you do like any of the pieces, please tell other people about the blog!

One of the ways that many people have tried to change this system is by tweaking the English language in ways that allow us to blur and even dissolve gender distinctions…especially regarding pronouns.

Instead of “He and She” and “His and Her” people have tried things like “Zhe and Hir” and “Squee and Squir”. I’ve always liked this, in theory, but to be honest the pronouns have always been a bit clumsy coming out of my mouth. Surely, this owes a lot to years and years of living in the gender-binary system, and not being accustomed to other ways of expressing and talking about gender…but I also just think that the sounds are a little bit hard to make…

And so, I want to show you another way to mess with gender and pronouns that’s really creative and really easy to use. It was thought up by friends Briana and Eva.

Very simply, you just turn the first letter of someone or something’s name into the pronoun. To make it possessive, just add ‘s to it. So simple. So, for example, my pronoun is J. So, “Jeremy’s birthday was yesterday. J turned 26. J’s friends and family were very happy to celebrate with J.” or…”Jeremy was talking to Briana last night, and B thought that J had made some really good points…”

See, it’s simple, and it’s cool. And what if you don’t know someone’s name? Then use P, for person. If it’s an object, use the name of the object, or sure, use T or O for Thing or Object. It’s cool!

Today I was riffing and doodling and journaling about 2 book ideas, about a serialized TV drama idea, about a board game idea, about a movement building idea, about the kind of house I want to build some day, about how I want to organize my new bedroom (I’ve just moved to another room in our collective house), and even more ideas than these. I was so excited that I wanted to write all about it in this blog, but I’m coming to learn that it’s important to pace myself, otherwise no one will read what I write due to being overwhelmed.

But, I do think it would be nice to write more of my ideas down, so I’m going to be thinking about how to do that. For some of these ideas, I actually have a fear that they will get stolen and used by someone else (especially the board game ideas) so I’ve been more secretive (did you know that Seattle is like a board-game designers’ capitol city??)…so I kind of want to do some research about all that intellectual property stuff…of course if I actually make a game and try to sell it, it would be not-for-profit, but I still don’t want the for-profits to steal it first.

Does anyone know if what I’m writing on this blog is protected intellectual property? If so, does that protect any ideas I might share or not? Any lawyers hidden among you 2-3 people reading this?

For now let’s just say that the creative ideas that I share on this site are not to be copied or stolen by anyone without communicating with me about it! Got it? Hopefully that would hold up under the law.

Here’s just one piece of my ideas to start: I would like to form a board game design collective to design a series of political board games that kind of work like a franchise: like one cohesive world (realistic or sci-fi or fantasy or maybe with animals like Redwall or Animal Farm), but with games playing out on different scales. All of them involve social movements struggling against a complex system, and sometimes competing and cooperating with each other, but each game would allow that theme to play out with different game mechanics. For example, at the macro scale, a risk/axis-of-allies style global revolution game with lots of pieces and rules and grand strategy; a more localized regional or national revolution game (like Settlers of Catan or El Grande); a discussion and relationship based “building a movement” game (like Diplomacy); a zoomed-in street-tactics or movement tactics game (more like chess or go or like the collectible miniatures games like HeroClix); a post-revolution building game (like Princes of Florence or Puerto Rico); a Magic the Gathering style card game (but without the capitalist collectible model); and eventually even a role playing game. I’ve worked on bits and pieces of the mechanics of almost all these different games, but it always comes down to the math. Most game designers are strong in math and probabilities and decision trees, and I’m not. I like thinking about people’s interactions and how rules can foster those interactions, but when the specific cards need to be made or whatever the math overwhelms me. That’s why I’d really like to have a collective, and we could run it radical style and use it to help spread alternative pop cultures and also fund the movement…so if anyone is interested in starting something like that, based broadly on the “franchise” idea of multiple games taking place in the same revolutionary universe, please let me know!

So more on that idea as it develops, and more of my other creative ideas in the future. Ah, it feels good to actually get some of these ideas shared with someone!

When I was in high school I had this super dorky slogan I told myself: “Dreams Over Drugs.” Truth is, I’m a very, very vivid dreamer (I often have lucid dreams, in which I know I’m dreaming and I can shift and control them…so I very rarely have nightmares), and so I decided that I would focus on my dreaming as an alternative to the psychadelic drugs that my friends were doing.

What I’ve found is that if I actively try to remember my dream from the night before, especially if I write it down, then I will dream vividly again the next day. I’ll let you know if this is confirmed by my dreams tonight…

Edit: Yep, I had very vivid dreams last night, and since I remembered them I hope the cycle will continue and my dreams will just get better.

So, I’m an anarchist. What that means is that I believe in nice things like grassroots participatory/direct democracy, cooperation, freedom, social justice, community-based sustainable living, and equality. Being for these things means that I’m also against the different forms of injustice and oppression that exist in this society of ours…things like sexism, racism, homophobia/heterosexism, transphobia, ableism, imperialism, ageism/adultism, religious oppression, and certainly also authoritarianism and capitalism…because–for my family members out there who might be reading this–in my view capitalism isn’t just a benign, freedom-loving economic system, it is system that doesn’t work for the majority of people, it corrupts all of us with anti-social consumerist and competitive values, and it is a leading force in the dismantling of our planet. Bueno, so far so good. So, yeah, I’m an anarchist (which to me could also be considered a mixture of feminist, socialist, libertarian, radical democrat, anti-racist, environmentalist…what-have you)…

…yet, for all my supposed anarchism, and for how much I talk up grassroots social movements and communities organizing to change things from the bottom-up, I have noticed (as have many friends) that I spend an awful lot of time talking about, writing about, and paying attention to “revolutionary” governments, elections, politicians like Chavez, Morales, Correa, now Menchu, etc. and not a lot of time talking about more bottom-up movements and projects.

So, this seems to be a contradiction. Could it be a rekindling of my old teenage obsession with old radical “heroes” like Mao and Ho Chi Minh and Lenin? Is it just more ego stuff playing out across my blog?

That would be the simple answer. But I don’t think it’s the correct one, and I want to explain why.

I spend A LOT of time thinking about the idea of revolution. Like, a lot of time. Like morning, noon, and night. And for me, what revolution means is a massive reordering of things…of ideas, of attitudes, of relationships, of social structures, sometimes even of physical space. This is what I want for our society, because I think our society is due for a massive restructuring. The old structures suck.

That said, I spend a lot of time thinking about how revolutionary folks like us are actually going to make a revolution…and as I see it, we have three basic strategies:

1) We can fight the power. We can protest, organize, sabotage, confront, rebel against the existing system and do what we can to destabilize it so that it comes crumbling down and then…and then…and then this is where this strategy gets us in trouble. Because once a system, a way of life, a certain ordering of things has collapsed, what do people do then? Who’s to say that things will be better after the system falls? Sweet, the power is off, the sewers are backed up, there are people looting in the streets, rape is rampant…no thanks. There is clearly a limit to this strategy. Certainly, if the powers that be are too strong we can’t win anything, and so trying to weaken them through resistance (of different forms, and I really, really hope that those forms can be peaceful…) is important…but this strategy only takes us so far, which brings us to…

2) We can become the power. We can work to get elected or we could even work to gather strength and take over power forcefully. We would then have control of the existing infrastructure more-or-less intact, and then we could begin to dismantle or reconstruct it without the chaos and destruction and possible violence of strategy #1. That is, with this strategy, especially in electoral form, a slow, peaceful revolution is possible, and it could even be voted along, as is happening in Venezuela. The problem, of course, is that power corrupts. Even more, the system is designed to sustain itself, and that means the rules of the system are designed to make real, meaningful change almost impossible, and so trying to change things within the system almost never works…because the system changes you first. This has been shown to be true with coups just as much as elections. Good thing there is a third option:

3) We can build the power. That is, from the bottom-up, we can try to build an alternative structure of communities and relationships right alongside the old structures, and we can feed those structures and help them grow, hopefully to a point where they are so well-organized, lively, beautiful, and influential that the old ways just don’t make sense anymore, and people jump ship to the new system we built. An analogy would be the development of the internet, and how it has influenced more and more people to watch less tv and read less traditional corporate media in favor of blogs, etc…

As for me, I’m a gung-ho #3 guy. For me, #3 is the backbone of the revolution. Like I explained above, I believe that #1 is necessary to keep the system in check and to fight against injustices on a day to day basis, but #3 remains the prize that I want to keep my eye on.  My heart is in building new kinds of power and social relationships, it’s just so compelling to me as a process and a project.
However–and this is where I am different from many other anarchists–I know that within any process where significant numbers of people are doing #1 or doing #3, there will always emerge people who want to take a shot at #2, people who think there is a shortcut to power, either through direct force or through the electoral path. (Chavez is a great example of this. He is an ex military man. He became radicalized in the military, in a context in which he was fighting guerrillas, and working in rural communities…and over time he decided to organize to take power. First, in 1992, he tried the forceful route, with a failed coup that made him into a popular hero. Then, in 1998 he tried again through the electoral route…and he won an astounding victory. Now we get to watch his journey through strategy #2 unfold, and we get to see whether change really comes from it or not…) These #2 people are inevitable, and whereas most #1 and #3 people write them off as sell-outs or would-be tyrants, I think that since they are inevitable, we ought to look at them as a necessary part of any strategic equation and, on a case by case basis, see whether they can help us or not. I don’t think it’s totally black/white.

So, right now, what I see happening in Latin America these days is that #1 and #3 social movements have gotten to such positions of strength (and on the other side of equation, the existing power structures have lost so much credibility) that #2 people have managed to step up and actually win power…in Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile (kind of), Uruguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua…almost in Mexico, and possibly this year in Guatemala. Most of these #2′s are opportunists, some are more genuine than that. In all cases, their power is built on the legacies and sacrifices of decades of #1 and #3 people. I don’t deny this and I don’t lose sight of this, at least in my head, when I write about them…

But having both seen the utter shit situation of Guatemala, as well as the immense oil-wealth and power of Venezuela, I believe that there is something very unique about the role that #2 people who manage to win power can play. With traditional state power come tremendous political compromises and contradictions, but at the same time, there come massive budgets (compared to just the average social movement), there is infrastructure, there is the logistical power of the military and the civil services…These are nothing to sneeze at.

Let’s make up one example: access to reproductive health services for young women. #1 people would go a protest route, and maybe they’d win some more funding for some clinics or a change in consciousness about how intersecting oppressions are limiting access. #3 people might start a neighborhood group or a non-profit clinic and they can make a difference in scores of womens’ lives. But, and I saw evidence of this in Venezuela, if Chavez just reads a book about young womens’ lives and decides that something needs to be done, he can throw his oil money down…and in 6 months there could be 500 neighborhood clinics with creative programs all over Venezuela…the resources at the disposal of radical governments (especially those awash in oil money!) are exponentially greater than the resources of us #1 and #3 people…

And that is essentially why these #2 folks like Chavez and Morales and Correa intrigue me so…Because they are getting shit done SO FAST…stuff that my friends and I could write or dream about, and maybe do in our own communities, but nothing at the scale of a radicalized state.

Does this mean that I’m now a #2 person? Not a chance. I believe that, in the end, #3 is still the backbone, and that is why I’m intrigued that Chavez seems to recognize this with his communal council and socialist party strategies. He’s trying to build bottom-up power through a top-down process…and that woefully backwards, but it is riveting to me as an experiment.

Frankly, though, Chavez is still alive and in power precisely because he has the support of the #1 and #3 people of his country, and there are masses of them. They united to bring him to power, they united to get him back after the 2002 coup, and he owes them everything. That is why he is such a unique phenomenon.

As for me and us in the United States, I don’t think the lesson that Venezuela has for us is that we should go the #2 electoral route, too. No, I think our game is way too rigged for that. Rather, I think it is far more important to look at what Morales and Correa and Chavez are doing and see how we can convert those into #3 lessons and strategies here…slower, but still effective, and preserving their moral center.

This is also where the lessons of Mexico’s Zapatista and Oaxacan rebels, Brazil’s landless workers movement and Argentina’s horizontalist movements are so, so important. They have doggedly pursued #3 strategies, and their movements are going a whole lot slower, but they still have their souls almost fully intact, and they have loads of lessons for us.

So, this is where I’m at. I write so much about Venezuela and stuff, honestly, because they are doing so much…they have the resources to generate change so fast, and so that generates news really fast, too. The movements in South Africa, Oaxaca, Chiapas, San Francisco, Canada, Georgia, and Seattle don’t have those resources, so the news cycle is, frankly, much slower. And so I write less about them. But believe me, when something catches my eye, I’ll write about it.

Also, just to think about, the Christian Right has definitely been pursuing a strong #3 strategy as well (once again, watch Jesus Camp), and they are hoping that pays off (and it is) in #2 victories for them. So let’s watch them closely, because they know what they are doing.

Hope this post makes sense to you…just wanted to explain some things.