Pinocchio!

Coming soon to a town near you!

Hello! Been involving myself with some creative character assassination re: that dottering old man that you sometimes see on your television, John McCain! Wednesday was the first action of the campaign, (soon dwarfed by John McCain’s decision to bail on the debate), but we’ve been making headway with the newsmedia, local activists and the mythical ‘blogosphere’

Much like the Take Back NYU! adventure, this campaign is a PR sandbox for my wandering attentions. I’ve learned a few things since signing on:

– Condense condense condense – left-types get caught up too easily in writing out litanies of crimes or deceptions, which usually take too long to read and very rarely make an effective point (in terms of salience). Try to focus that energy into an image, slogan or idea. The Pinocchio nose only works in certain cases – McCain at one point tried to run a campaign on “honor,” and he has his face on the TV a lot, so the iconic image of the Pinocchio nose works particularly well.

– Entertain as well as act –  a point belabored elsewhere on this blog, but reinforced in the course of organizing – people react much better to the idea of public confrontation with a presidential candidate if they think it will be fun.

– The floating signifier – people respond to the surface of things.  This campaign intentionally tries to avoid dealing in depth.  Instead of trying to parse out truth from falsehood, we’re aiming for the image able to circulate independent of the exact ‘facts’ behind it.  That’s why the image of McCain with the Pinocchio nose was needed to anchor the campaign before we went public.

– Keep up with the news cycle, even when its hard – this was a campaign that developed lightning fast, riding the wave of a news cycle that was focused on McCain’s lies and deceptions in ads and elsewhere.  Arguably, the media backlash to the McCain negative press drove back down his numbers following the Palin/Convention bump.

Overriding question: What is the new ‘voice’ of the left, why are we so Ironic all the time?

Radical Jujutsu and Obama

Apologies dear blog.  A hectic time.

First – please please know and read Twin Cities Indymedia during the RNC.  The police response to protests has been violent, overbrearing, and cruel, and you should know as much as possible about the state of civil protest and policing in America.

Today was the first day of school for 2008-9.  Take Back NYU! had a press conference and delivered demands to the NYU administration.  Much fanfare, read about it in your tomorrow’s paper.

Some thoughts on my mind, regarding the eleclection.  While it increasingly looks like John McCain will self destruct of his own accord, something should still be said about this Obama fellow, and his rhetoric – specifically, regarding the radical reaction to Obama and the whole ‘hope’ thing.

First of all, I think that Obama has tapped into the feeling of total disempowerment that people feel regarding national politics.  Seriously: it doesn’t matter how much you hate the war, how many Democrats get into congress, it just feels like everything keeps going downhill.  Obama recognized this and drew on that discontentment to fuel what at least looks like an outsider campaign as a renewal of the American promise.

He’s running as a radical, Jefferson style politician, renewing the tree of liberty and whatnot; focusing on the little person.  He’s co-opting a lot of radical/classic far-left rhetoric, most prominently the “Yes we can” refrain lifted from Caesar Chavez – a particularly sinister device considering his connections to the Chicago School of Economics.

The radical response to Obama seems tepid.  The bulk of what I hear seems to be a very negative response, mainly pointing out that Obama doesn’t represent ‘real change’, and that by golly, folks better be ready to be disappointed.

Look, Obama didn’t become the candidate of change by just saying so.  He also didn’t get it by being real about change either.  He orchestrated a careful symbolic coup that involved his role as a black man on a national political stage, trying to ‘renew the American promise’ (a phrase he used more in teh Convention speech than the ‘change’ line).

The point is this: standing aside and snipping at ‘real change’ won’t get anywhere.  Barack Obama is selling Jeffersonian iPods, and just saying ‘no’ won’t cut it.  He is successfully pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a mainstream American- that’s an opportunity, not something to be casually condemned.  The most successful redeployments of Obama’s rhetoric will be done by folks of color, probably casually lifting snippets of rhetoric without making the connection explicit – trying to make the comparison outright would appear self-promoting, something that Obama carefully avoids, instead embracing a vague ‘community over individual’ aesthetic (there’s a reason he recalls being a community organizer so much).

This is a moment for Jujutsu, not for stodgy naysaying.

Olympics and the Conventions: an Un-shocking Doctrine

Ride of the future. from derfasaurus' flickr photostream

Naomi Klien quite brillianty documents the rise of a disaster industrial complex in her book the Shock Doctrine. The Chicago School of Economics and their hangers on have crafted an ideology that uses political, ecological or military crisis to ram through the creation of a neoliberal-military hybrid state.

Now, the process is continuing with un-shocking events of political stagecraft.

First, there was Miami in 2003, where the Miami PD turned an FTAA meeting into a police riot, funded by millions of dollars in Homeland Security funds, spent on weapons that no doubt remain in the hands of the department today.  Handling of the protests became a “model for Homeland Security,” in the words of Miami’s mayor.  He was right.

Then, there was the 2004 RNC, an event still echoing through New York’s legal system and political consciousness.  The convention and protests surrounding it involved a mind-numbing abuse of police power, and the pretext of convention security provided the excuse to bulk up on security devices still in use today – cameras, riot gear, tasers and more.  More importantly, it provided a pretext to break down convergence points in New York’s activist networks, creating capacity building problems that

More recently, there was the Olympics, where China spent $12 billion on security measures.  That’s about 10 times more than what was spent in Athens, and 20 times more than what was spent in Salt Lake City.  Almost none of that will disappear after the Olympics end – those cameras, weapons, personnel, etc., will become permanent features of China’s police infrastructure.

Now we have the 2008 conventions.  Each will incur about $50 million in security costs.  At Denver, we saw the use of pepper-spray bullets, as well as those shiny new police-truck things pictured above.  At the RNC in the Twin Cities, tactics borrowed from New York have begun – illegal detentions, arrests, and raids have been carried out against the anti-authoritarian and anarchist presence, doubtless using technology bankrolled by the DHS and taxpayers.

I say ‘illegal’ because I think there is a conscious effort on the part of the police to make arrests that they know to be unauthorized: since it remains illegal to resist an illegal arrest, and police accountability is so so broken in this country, police can make arrests without fear of serious retribution.  Any legal ramifications down the road are minuscule compared to the millions in free equipment and more in publicity cities earn from hosting these conventions ‘trouble free.’

The Miami Model and its inheritors risk not only the right to free speech and vital civil rights, but also a severe backlash.  Using overwhelming force to execute the whim of police administrators and politicians leaves no recourse to serious protesters except a violent response.  That’s not a threat: that’s a fact of how people will respond to this strategy.

Barack Wants You to Turn it Up!

from Steve Rhode's flickr photostream

Tonight!  Barack Obama sells an iPod to 75,000 screaming fans!  Thousands more weep in ecstasy as they whip out credit cards to get their own limited edition, personalized Obama personal music devices!  Spectacle leaves thousands in eschatalogical stupor!

Don’t think the yuppie-hipster obsession overlap exhausts the Obama-iPod connection.

1. Will.i.am – “Yes We Can” looks like an Mac ad with a different background color.  Oh wait – there’s another one that IS a Mac ad.

2. my.barakobama.com.  ‘i – my’ the lowercase personalization prefix feels a little played at this point, but Obama exploits it to good effects.  The website has the bubble-gloss/spare feel of an OS X desktop, and the hyper-personalization of Macs works just like his political rhetoric, which has the ability to become all things to all hearers.

3. The fervor.

4.  The Logo.  iPod scroll wheel, anyone?  Also, works like the Apple decal – very iconic, very round, immediately signals inclusion in a cult of sorts.

5. ATT. Apple ❤ AT&T – giving them an exclusive hold on the iPhone market – and Barack Obama ❤ AT&T.

6.  iPods break.  A lot.  Barack Obama breaks… promises.

The Pump-Up PR!

A sign like this stands by the side of the highway betwee Atlanta and Athens, Georgia. For most of the time I lived in the area, I was confused about its purpose – I figured that any serious secular/evolution-friendly driver would not be swayed by such a silly appeal, and most folks don’t even take account of roadside distractions. Now, I’m not saying this is exactly a brilliant piece of political propaganda, but a good friend of mine pointed out what it really means, and why it works.

It’s a pat on the back to the fundies – a pump up to the folks on their daily drive, to tell them they’re under assault, but at the same time that they aren’t alone.

I like it. It’s pithy. And probably effective. More effective than a lot of protests you’ll see at the conventions, for example.

When I was reading Edward Bernays‘ book Propaganda, I came across this quote, which I think remains applicable to left-organizing today:

“The old-fashioned propagandist, using almost exclusively the appeal of the printed word, tried to persuade the individual reader to buy a definite article, immediately. This approach is exemplified in a type of advertisement which used to be considered ideal from the point of view of directness and effectiveness:

‘YOU (perhaps with a finger pointed at the reader) buy O’Leary’s rubber heels– NOW.’

The advertiser sought by means of reiteration and emphasis, to break down or penetrate sales resistance.”

Ahem: “What do we want? O’Leary’s rubber heels! When do we want it? NOW!”

I’ve gone over my beefs with the ‘shame! shame!’ tactics previously, but I want to reiterate, perhaps with a little bit of positivity.

The visible conflicts seen on the daily news are only a snippet of the real work of activism, we already know that. Making a press conference, or a protest happen takes many times over the time length of the actual event. It would be foolish to organize an event on short notice, without arming yourself with the days of neccesary prep time.

Which does not mean that public relations strategies should be reduced to those public confrontations – lest you be the folks still trying to sell shoes by the force of will alone. PR should include strategies that pump-up and inspire, as well as confront and shame. Thus, via a good friend – The Super Happy Anarcho Fun Pages! Some of the best shit on earth!

I love SHAFP because it doesn’t have to be all about the struggle – that tends towards exhaustion, or just as bad, towards cliche. Sometimes you just want to feel like someone else is on the right side, and the comics do that, brilliantly. This is in contrast to the more blatant ‘comics as propaganda’ you also see from the Christian right – instead of pretending that people like comics for comics sake, and will be more susceptible to a message because it’s in comic form, SHAFP embraces the levity and easy-going feel of a comic book to inspire love (and rage).

So, the point: use multiple media forms for multiple messages. But don’t pretend that does the trick – embrace each one for it’s unique tools, and make a message that fits each one.

Twittering Your Thumbs

This is hillarious.

But what really makes it (and attached post from Radar) interesting is how it contrasts with the writing of people like Jeff Jarvis or NYC blogger Lisa Sabater that make Twittering a cornerstone of their online presence, alongside blogging and social networking.

I’m still trying to decide on how or if to use social networks – I consider them to have limited utility at best as organizing tools, as danah boyd explained in her essay in the anthology Personal Democracy. I think her argument about the online echo-chamber very simply explains why techno-phillia seems so prevalent: social networking sites, twitter, etc. only put you in contact with people who also like and use those technologies.  And if you write about media or technology, that necessarily skews your perception of how many people use that technology, and its relevance – your sense of what matters on a large scale leans towards their world view constructed through the lens of the people they know in (ultimately) local, small scale communities.

In terms of building organizations and effective social change, nothing beats feet on the ground.  The internet only functions as a useful device for social change if people already seek out other people pursuing social change, and already want to use it as such.  (Not to say that there’s an impossible gap between political types and non-, but it’s safe to say that folks use the internet in regular, enclaved ways)  Being ‘in the streets’ shouldn’t be fetishized – I’ve seen enough ineffective face-to-face preachings to know that you can alienate and  frustrate in person – but I think it’s a pipe dream to see social networking, or blogging (ha) as a cure to what ails organizers.

As a caveat, I think Facebook as some advantages, in particular contexts.  What drove Facebook’s early growth was its connection to specific places – colleges.  It built directly on the activity of daily networking students engage in for whatever reason, and made an online presence around that physical interaction, amplifying it in unique ways.  I think social networking can solidify certain types of relationships in ways useful to organizers, but those begin from local, physical interactions.

Why I Identify as a Student Activist

Pulled out some writing from earlier this summer.

I am a student activist because I believe this education is more than a training ground. I refuse to deny the value of my thought and action by asserting the existence of a more real world that lies beyond our imagined institutional borders. Positioning the university as training for a world of more real action to come makes NYU nothing more than a purple Disneyland in New York, reducing our intellectual and political activities to escapism in the service of established authority. I think ‘training ground’ notion of education fundamentally denies the purpose of being in school. Treating education as training already cedes legitimacy to the status quo as ‘the real world,’ at which point the individual contributions we imagine for ourselves as graduates lose their power and relevance. The lives we lead in our years as students necessarily impact the world around us – and not just in some impossible future. We labor, we consume and we educate each other in the process of obtaining a degree – that all-access ticket to ‘reality.’

I have three thoughts to add:

The Battle In Seattle – Don’t Try to Fight the Feeling

Oh shit, I don’t even know how to feel about this right now. Riot porn + Dramatic Film Score + Perspective of Police (?) + muthafuckin’ Andre 3000. I think the fact I find this trailer so damn titillating means it will be marginally successful, bringing attention to what remains a vitally important event in contemporary American history.

The first thing to remember about Seattle is the role of violence. In reality, there was very little (if any) real violence done by protesters. The majority of the damage was directed at property (I suspect that there weren’t just folks chillin in Starbucks with a mass protest filling the streets outside, as in the trailer), and as a tactic it worked, on two levels – one, the meeting stopped. No joke. Two – it made the WTO a household name, when prior to Seattle, the organization intentionally kept a low profile, trying to pass off their ‘reforms’ without public comment. (as a side note, many WTO decisions on trade rules occur by administrative fiat, handed down from what amounts to a globalized Supreme Court, and can’t be overruled unless every country in the WTO disagrees – a process called ‘negative consensus’. It runs on ignorance.)

With the ‘riots,’ the WTO became front page news, for the first time. The movie shows why it worked – the whole conflict was theatrical, imagistic warfare, almost like something out of a movie. The battle invoked property manchean divisions, and a fall from grace narrative that never gets old. A peaceful protest, corrupted by radical forces that bring them into conflict with a faceless, menacing enemy that took damn good pictures.

I still have my concerns. I’m worried the film will over-dramatize what should be seen as a regular occurrence – dissent that extends into active civil disobedience, including breaking laws. Since Seattle (or, more specifically since the February 15th, 2003 protests failed to stop the War in Iraq), the American anti-war and anti-globalizaiton movement has been on a downward slide (at least in terms of mass mobilization, other DA tactics have perhaps been more successful). Part of the reason is fear – of the cops, of arrest, of pepperspray, of anarchists, among other things. I worry that this film might contribute to the melodramatization of protest to the point where people don’t want to do it any more.

I’m curious to see what people take away from the film. I wonder if the message of the disparate groups will come through – the film’s website makes a nominal effort to expose folks to the messages, but the film might just take itself too damn seriously to let the arguments of protesters come through. (perhaps a reason for better organizing – this time for the screen as a stage)

Also: shoutout to Lt. Starbuck, now on the blogroll.  He has shit to say on this topic in his latest post. Much love, much love.

New York City Anti-Gentrification Movements – A Catalog of Failure

Youre not alone. Now act. from Steve Rhodes flickr photostream.

I’m putting it out there: folks fighting for fair housing and lower rents in New York have dropped the ball.  Just in the past few months, we saw a series of inept, boring or ineffective protests calling for better rent controls, preservation of historic neighborhoods, and a stop to huge government led gentrification processes, all to no avail.

First: at the Rent Guidelines Board meeting that finalized drastic rent increases for rent stabilized tenants (the largest since 1989), activists opposing the hike attempted the OK strategy of disrupting the meeting by blowing whistles – OK, except when considering that strategy failed already in 2006, and the most activists got out of the meeting was meaningless pontificating by Christine Quinn and Scott Stringer (whose job description seems to be nothing more than meaningless pontificating)

Second: The Die Yuppie Scum protests – a two parter, targeting… well, something that folks just don’t like about the Bowery.  These protests seem like an effective strategy (menacing landlords), but taking into consideration the overbearing influence of the NYPD on the protest’s actions and direction, the latest iteration of the Slacktavist’s rage looked and felt more like a parade of the old LES preserved behind bars than a real threat to neighborhood change.  These protests tried too much of the “Stop! No!” style that ignores the incredible cultural cachet of the new-New York, and the organizational difficulties of assembling a good fightin’ crowd for battle with the police these days.  The “Die Hard” protest did a fine job ginning up interest through theatricality, but the execution fell flat on anything other than interesting sloganeering.  The upshot: I don’t think anyone is betting against a further Varvatos-ification of the Bowery.

Third: Chinatown/LES rezoning and protest.  I think this is an interesting story – in the beginning, anti-gentrification folks rallied for the rezoning, with testimony in early zoning meetings focusing on NYU, the bar-ification of the East Village, and the need to include anti-tenant harrassment planks in the rezoning proposal.  Then, somewhere along the way, things got lost.  The Bowery and 3rd Ave, originally targetted for downzoning got written out of the proposal, allowing for a continued up-sizing and up-scaling of a key thouroughfare for the east side.  Inclusionary zoning made its way to Delancy, Houston and Avenue D, paving the way for more lux development.

And most importantly, folks outside the propsed rezone area saw the writing on the wall and realized they were next should the neighborhoods covered limit development.   That began the backlash. There were screaming fights at Community Board 3 meetings, direct accusations of racism, and more.  At the same time, community organizers for people left out of the rezoning have refused to target landlords, instead calling for a ‘me too’ mediocre response to a big problem, leading up to… this –  Another sign waving, speech making ‘protest’ asking to ‘preserve’, standing in front of a civic building.  Their demand makes only limited sense – even if rezoning happened for all of CB3, it would give no guarantee of low income housing, and more likely sneak in more inclusionary zoning or worse – turn Chinatown into the West Village, a historic neighborhood under glass.

To me, the LES/CB3 rezoning debacle points out the inherant flaws of approaching zoning and real estate from the perspective of preservationism – it favors affluent communities (73% of CB3’s white residents are in the rezoning), and fails to take into account the social justice componant – namely, spillover effects that potentially displace other communities.  It also shows the flaws of a government-focused approach, producing a problematic rezoning law, and a probably more problematic response to that rezoning.

The one brightspot is the Union Square pavilion fight, where community activists seem to have turned the tide a bit, stopping the resturant in the short term, and lauching the Community Improvement District idea in the longer term.  With a narrow focus and popular opinion clearly agains the proposed changes, this was perhaps a winning battle from the get go.

Still, it shows the usefulness of theatricality, and a serious engagement with the culture of New York – the Union Square ‘CID’ employs historical figures intimately connected to New York – George Washington, Emma Goldman, etc. – to make an argument about preserving a contemporary space.  That’s not enough – they also take it a step further and mix in the Reverand Billy factor, using participatory street theater and well planned media actions to draw attention to their cause.

Here’s the upshot – anti- gentrification and fair housing advocates need to do a better job ju-jitsuing the myths, lies and media mockups surroundign New York.

Don’t preserve the past, turn it into an argumetn about the future.  Like Andy Warhol?  Well, he certainly couldn’t rent out that nice loft space any more, thanks to gentrification – maybe if there was serious funding of housing for artists, New York could stumble upon the next Warhol in the rough.  Same with CBGBs.

Don’t just condemn the people selling New York, make their pitch part of yours.  How about Sex and the City?  A tough one – clearly a product designed to sell glitz and glam New York – but who designs all those clothes?  Not just Donna Karan, there’s a hoarde of underpaid staffers and interns making those fashion choices possible – they certainly can’t get by in a red hot real estate market.

Even government ad campaigns to sell the city can be flipped – all those Welcome to New York, Just Ask the Locals ads?  Bet you DeNiro, Chuck Close and Julianne Moore didn’t start out in $3 Million apartments.

Rising rents in New York are driven by the cultural product of the city – the skyline and nightlife sold in dozens of movies, hundreds of TV show episodes, and by the government of New York itself.  That image has gone global, and makes it possible for foreign investors to pour capital into the city by puchasing buildings wholesale (as is happening in el Barrio), or buying up apartments for vacations (as is happening… well, everywhere).  Cheap rents and rent control made New York’s globe-spanning cultural products possible in the first place.  (think grafitti, Jay-z, SoHo artist lofts, Punk Rock, New York’s literary avant guarde, etc.) Fair housing and anti-gentrification movements will only get off the ground and into serious change by starting with the popular idea of New York and using those cultural norms against the rapid transformation of New York City into a playground of the rich.

Electronic Voting Machines – Fair Trade Voting At Best

This video never stops being important.

So, today I did a bit of research on electronic voting machines following Wired’s ThreatLevel post on NY State voting machines – half of the machines bought from Sequoia Voting Systems seem to be broken in various regards, not even counting the unverifiable counting mechanism itself.

The reaction to electronic voting machines totally fascinates me. Voting is the act that creates the idea of the American democracy, and when people lose touch with that act, the whole facade of participation starts to fall apart.

I particularly like the metaphor of ‘black box voting‘, because it echoes the Marxist commodity fetishism critique of capitalism. Essentially, exploitation through capitalism occurs because the means of production occurs in a ‘black box,’ that mystifies the actual conditions of labor and produces the thing known as profit – surplus value. The ‘liberal’ critique of exploitive production in capitalism (think Whole Foods, Fair Trade foods) calls for a demystification of those conditions of production, and tries to open up the black box by challenging the conditions of production, but without unlocking the central question – how surplus value is created to make profit for the owner of the means of production.

So, folks agitating to get our voting machines working again, to protect elections, are like the people trying to buy fairer foods through the capitalist commodity chain – they may make things a little more transparent, but can’t get to the core exploitation that makes growers sell at prices lower than what buyers pay, and makes buyers pay more than the sum total of ‘parts and labor’ going into the product. We may have cleaner elections, but the basic problems at the core of American representative democracy remain.

We only have two parties. All our Presidents have been men. All have been white. Almost all rich. Etc, etc…

I think people latch on to the idea of electronic voting machines, and their mystical powers to steal elections because it condenses the basic alienation of American politics. Jesus, riots and wars start over problems smaller than what went on in 2000 and 2004, but who’s going to die for Al Gore? Or John Kerry? (At least one person got tasered. Probably more, now that I think of it)

What happens with voting machines is no more or less mystical (or serious) than what happens when Democrats sweep to victory in 2006 only to refuse to impeach Bush, and fail to stop the war. It’s all out of our hands, things happen in Washington politics that boggle the mind, no matter who wins elections. In the same way that people constantly seek to erode the power of the ‘black box’ commodity fetish, try to concoct a talisman that will ward off exploitation through capitalism, eliminating electronic voting has become the talisman meant to ward off a collapse of our democracy. (Tellingly, most electronic voting activists are Democratic partisans, doubtless the most alienated and betrayed group in American politics. See Stop Me Before I Vote Again)

Upshot: I wonder if latching on to electronic voting to describe the problems in American governance is helpful. I like it because it allows me to dismiss sometimes tedious discussions about the election, when I’m feeling particularly grumpy or busy, but other than that I’m skeptical that fixing the machines fixes the machine.

EDIT – Here’s a link to more info on the NY voting machine problems.

TimeOut NY Wants You to Change New York – But Not Too Much

image from TimeOut New York's latest issue.

TimeOut New York took an admirable jab at getting New Yorkers into some activism with their latest issue – decked out in red tinted activist-y decoupage, of course – but misses (more than) a few points. Summary:

GOOD: Critical Mass! An actual endorsement for almost direct action!
BAD: No other mention of direct action. A friend of mine might describe much of their suggestions as ‘Liberal Bullshit.’ There was way too much discussion of calling legislators and asking nicely. Concerned about housing prices? Squat! Food going to waste? Dumpster it! (The ‘food is wasted’ section really needed to talk about Food Not Bombs) Take to the streets, but realize that moral persuasion only goes so far in getting the change you want – at some point you have to pose a risk to the interests and goals of the people you wish to persuade, and phonecalls just won’t do the trick.

GOOD: Acknowledgment of the housing crisis! A two part-er – New York homelessness continues to a be a problem, as does gentrification, which creates vulnerability to homelessness.
BAD: Umm, connecting the dots anyone? Homelessness and lack of affordable housing are the same issue, and parsing out ‘homelessness’ as a problem turns homelessness into a pathology rather than the result of systemic violence. Homelessness happens because of the cost of housing, not a lack of ‘job skills’ or ‘training.’ Too many people conflate homelessness with unemployment, but someone can go homeless while employed because of rent increases, spouses leaving – any number of sudden reasons.
Another problem: what the fuck is ‘overdevelopment‘? And what does it mean to ‘kill a neighborhood’? TimeOut devotes a whole section to this, and all it talked about was preserving buildings and shit. I don’t think you can talk about ‘killing a neighborhood’ unless you talk about what that means materially for the people that live there. This is not a legitimate issue until you connect it to the actual struggle of people to make do in capitalism, instead of merely protecting the interests of the already-established.

GOOD: Acknowledging environmental catastrophe!
BAD: Pretending it’s consumer’s fault! TimeOut gives some useful tips on cleaning up riverfront trash, reducing air emissions, etc. – but doesn’t ask who produced that trash, the cars creating air pollution, and totally ignores ConEd when talking about ‘deadly air.’ Also, dirty air doesn’t just happen everywhere – New York has a history of locating environmental contaminants in and around poor neighborhoods. Why is the Cross-Bronx Expressway not the Cross SoHo Expressway? Where are the power plants (and landfills) in New York? Seriously: coal/gas power plants hurt people, and ConEd placed its New York plants in places where people wouldn’t complain, or if residents did ignore, they could be ignored with limited political fallout.

GOOD: Talking about unions! Organize!
BAD: TimeOut doesn’t actually suggest anyone form or join one. Instead, they suggest wearing pro-union clothes and singing songs. Uhhh…

BAD: Misplaced priorities. The topics for the issue were selected by ‘reader poll,’ which means that the population of prisons and other marginalized groups probably didn’t have much say. That’s a serious oversight – NYPD has more than its share of issues, NYC Department of Corrections has similar or more problems. I also would have liked to see a discussion of the privatization/elimination of public space, and a discussion of AIDS, particularly in connection to the bit on homelessness. I don’t think TO NY had many homeless people asking about how to get into a home, they had housed people asking about how to get homeless folks out of their neighborhood.

Also, shoutout to Nina, now on the blogroll…

Policing Absurdities Part 3 – the Petty

Alright, I’m going to try and make this a quick post because I’m tired. More or less, I’m tired of the petty bullshit police pull. I wouldn’t normally go out of my way to take up someone over interpersonal slights or bending rules, but in the case of police, petty abuses add up to undermine public confidence in the police (which creates problems of its own); they also indicate more fundamental problems in the way police treat non-police.

Twice in one week, I’ve been in situations where police use sirens or the appearance of an emergency to run red lights or simply move traffic. In both cases, cops flipped on their lights or siren for a short period of time to blow through intersections and force drivers to the side, only to resume driving normally a short distance later. So, tonight: cop rolls up to red light at Houston and Ave B/Clinton, turns on lights to get through intersection before drivers enter, makes a left onto Suffolk (also running a red) where they turn off their lights and keep driving normally. Previously: Mulberry St., turning left onto Canal, traffic is stopped, cop immediately behind me flips on their siren, forcing me and the driver ahead to the left while they cruise through, turn left, turn off the siren and keep driving.

Am I petty to complain? yeah, but they’re even more petty for using the fear/institution of the police to suit their driving whims.

Alright, here’s the bigger politics part. The excuse for such behavior, and much other even worse behavior, is that cops are only human – they have needs, wants, frustrations, etc., and the stress of their job sometimes pushes them to cut corners. Similarly, cops deflect criticism of violent actions by claiming to merely do their jobs, they they have a family, kids, and a mortgage. At the same time, people with families, kids and bills to pay fill America’s jails – they receive very limited or no deference for circumstance or human frustration.

Regarding cops as human beings means creating the reasonable expectation that they reciprocate. And just as you’d never do a favor for a friend that lies and manipulates you, I don’t think people should do favors for (“just move back to the sidewalk, I agree with you on this one, I’m only trying to do my job”) or make excuses for cops that manipulate their power, commit acts of violence, or threaten to put you in jail. Until I can skip bail or void a sentence because of my personal commitments to a job, family member or ideal, I won’t tolerate a cop doing something wrong because of their personal commitments.

In the cases I described above, I have one caveat: even if I had talked to the particular officers about why I was frustrated with them, I would have no protection against retaliation by the officers. So, that’s another beef – real accountability that either provides a safe forum for bringing officers to the table to discuss abuses of power, or a way to check against officer retaliation (that isn’t the CCRB, which sucks.)

Movies and Mass Change – What if the Left Media Bias Was Real?

This movie is sweet.

Today I attended a screening of the above movie at the Brecht Forum, an event hosted by GoLeft.org, and also attended by the film’s co-writer Jeremy Pisker. GoLeft describes themselves as a group of “activists and pop-culture whores” that attempts to figure out how to make activist politics more palatable.

A necessary goal – I am taking up an oath to never once more chant “What do we want? [insert demand]!!! When do we want it? NOW!!” or “The People, united….” or other such chants at rallies or protest, on principle because of triteness and political impotency. The fundamental mediocrity of so much protesting almost hurts, and recycling halfhearted chanting makes that pain almost too much to bear. the Bulworth event sparked some interesting ideas –

What if the Left Media Bias Was True? – Any serious analysis of the news easily picks apart the claim of a left-leaning slant in reporting, but that doesn’t mean that activists can’t find useful tools in mass media. In the book Dream, Stephen Duncombe deconstructs a McDonalds commercial to discover arguments for shorter workdays, improved education systems and a clean environment – a ‘bias’ not evident in the ads funding or intent, but implicit in its appeal to the ‘good’ in people’s lives. The amenability of corporations to greenwashing and other forms of consumer activism (organics, Whole Foods, other such shit) demonstrates the underlying aesthetic of consumption in the fulfillment of human desire – it is this aesthetic of dreaming that progressive politics must attach itself to.

Make sure your people are enjoying themselves – A basic philosophy of new age corporate management is to treat your employees like volunteers. This means respecting them as human beings, and creating a work environment that is its own reward, rather than a mere means to an end. In my experience, too many left organizations don’t even treat their volunteers like volunteers. Folks show up to pay their moral debts, pontificate, or make very stern faces for news cameras. The desire to stop something usually incites this type of masochism. Making protests/actions/organizing interesting in and of themselves might improve the saliency of their appeals. Someone in the audience tonight put it thusly: “we must be beholden to the value of human interaction” a fancy way of saying “talk with people like its fun to talk to them, not because you necessarily want them to do something for you.” This idea might also lead to the result of making every action organizations pursue an end in themselves – producing awareness or sparking new activism, even if their explicit demands aren’t met.

Last, the role of mass media. The screenwriter Pisker said something interesting in the Q and A (which was remarkable all around – he was engaging and thorough with every question, and showed a real regard for everyone in the audience). He expressed concern about a proposed ending to the film, which would have Warren Beatty’s character abandon politics to become a community organizer, as “too preachy.” This caught my eye because commentators (on the right in particular) level the ‘preachy-ness’ complaint against most celebrities/Hollywood types that become politically active. The fact that Fox distributed Bulworth created no slight ambivalence for the screenwriter as well – in response to a question I asked, he said that ‘if I wanted to devote my life to political change, I wouldn’t be in this industry’ – a comment that suggests difficulties for anyone trying to create a mass mediated revolution. From the perspective of a viewer, I’m not sure I agree with his dismissal. I think mass media entertainment products can create change within limited boundaries, while providing lessons to organizers who want to create more radical change. Here’s the lesson I took: organizers should make entertaining a priority as high or higher than that of a carefully crafted message, so that the message becomes relevant, popular and accessible.

Radical Organizing on the Web – Beyond the Netroots

Right now I’m pondering media and public relations strategies for two groups – Take Back NYU! and the Brecht Forum – and I wanted to put down here some of my thoughts on how to transition grassroots organizing onto the web without devolving into the ‘netroots’ inanity I’ve described before in previous posts about the drawbacks of net-organizing (political impotency, undue obsession with the internet as an organizing tool).

An idea tossing around in my head for a while is the idea of all-access, ‘open-source’ movement building. Essentially, I’d like to see grassroots organizations pursue their struggles while maintaining a constant presence on the web, turning their activities into content for blogs, video/audio channels and more. This idea stems from two trends: the rise of all-access TV and web content, and the development open-source software, both of which grassroots organizations can capitalize on to expand their support at their base, and in mass/mainstream environments.

NYU Bullshit and Students that Give a Damn

Classic NYU. From Alicetiara's flickr

This Friday, a protest led by the East Village Slacktivists will step up the heat building from from the Bowery Wine protest last month by targeting the Economakis townhouse, followed by a move to protest at an NYU Dorm. The NYU jab is an interesting one, which raises questions for myself as someone pretty much totally offended by NYU’s politics, but who also attends the school

First let me say that much of my writing on this blog is happening because the venerable NYUinc blog has been down for a good few weeks. (We seem to have lost our domain registration…) NYUinc is a student run, independent activist newspaper for the NYU community that puts out an annual Disorientation Guide for new students, as well as providing regular news and commentary on the politics of NYU. Once the ‘inc gets back online, I’ll probably write about it here, and my post volume will go down (slightly).

Lets face it: NYU has problems, of which buses are only one. The picture above was taken at the GSOC grad student union strike in 2005, when NYU arrested half a dozen of its students before taking a case to what amounts to the labor law Supreme Court to deny the right of grad students to form unions. That’s not all: since then, the school has begun a massively risky and dangerous venture in Abu Dhabi, aggravated local community members by pushing out local grocery stores, threatening to demolish public housing as well as historic buildings without consultation with the community, and forked over money for the destruction of Washington Square Park. All this while raising student tuition above the rate of inflation for over 20 years in a row, and taking money from corporate criminals. (believe me, there’s more where that came from – the shit hits the fan come September)

Seriously, it’s bad. Which is not to say that there’s no reason to go to school at NYU.

Net Activism – Another Flip-Flop

I don't know what this means, but I think it has to do with my post. from hugovk's flickr

OK, so here’s a little foot in mouth: in my earlier post about net activism and the Obama I was perhaps overzealous in dismissing some of the potential relevance of net/blog activism.

This article from the New York Sun on the education blog Eduwonkette makes me reconsider some of my initial thoughts.

First, some nuance: Eduwonkette is an anonymously written blog piggybacking a major print publication’s website (Education Week, a regular serial for the k-12 educators set). They write as an expert (savant?), to a specific audience and to a specific purpose. This is an effort clearly directed at a single, narrow goal. It is not a citizen’s movement.

Posts such as this one (about the policies of a particular New York Department of Education admin) play rhetorical and political hardball, instead of sermonizing on the righteousness of webroots democracy in action (as many netizens are aught to do). The anonymous blogger names names and doesn’t hesitate to play up beefs with individuals, as long as sound theoretical evidence supports those beefs.

The point is this: blogging can take an activist bent when working with a specific audience that has a good chance of reading and understanding the shit someone puts online. It allows for a blogger (and maybe a group of bloggers – I like the blog Crooked Timber for higher ed in this case, or the blog Daily Gotham for NYC Democratic politics – though it sways a bit more towards the overzealous netizen style that I find a bit silly) to wield power within a particular bureaucratic environment, influencing specific people on particular policies.

Blogging can target the personalized nature of bureaucracy (those who get ahead do it by knowing the right people), because it allows anonymity and personalization. In the same way that Perez Hilton stages takedowns of celebrities he doesn’t like, certain bloggers in the right environment can stage takedowns of the folks that wield power in that environment. It provides an alternative to bureaucracy by giving folks at the top of the pile something to fear.

The DoE example in this case shows that a blog, persuasively written and widely distributed, produces an alternative point of power that weighs against the otherwise unchecked authority of bureaucratic higher-ups. Regular folks get shit done because Eduwonkette writes about it – that’s an important thing.

But it’s not the only thing that matters. (To the Obama-folks: just keep posting, maybe something will change! Or maybe not.)

Obama’s Flip-Flop – Get Off the Internet!

from blmurch’s flickr

Obama’s telecom immunity flip-flop earned him some new press and a online ‘movement’ of 15,000 or so people petitioning him via his website to reject immunity. Almost simultaneously, folks in charge of the DNC announced their policy towards other, more unruly types of protest by basically telling protesters in Denver to go fuck themselves.

On the one hand, this episode shows a potential benefit of candidate internet-openness – Obama was forced to respond to an complaint raised solely by his supporters, changing his agenda and forcing him off message. In a sense, that demonstrates a type of power wielded by net-activists: they can raise issues, reset political agendas, and press candidates on their image. (The case of Trent Lott in 2003 was a particularly telling, if almost cliche example of this type of ‘gotcha’ politics played by bloggers)

On the other hand, it shows the danger of organizing and activism online. The internet, social networking technologies like Facebook, and blogs have a certain, sexy appeal. They make political expression easy, personally rewarding and visible. Folks like Markos Moulitsas become netizen celebrities off the power of their blogging opinions, you can connect with literally millions of people and get them to join petition-groups on Facebook, etc. etc.

But all this seduces more than it produces a viable independent movement that challenges the power of political parties, governments, and corporations. The DNC article from above is vastly more important than the Obama one: it reveals the fundamental disregard American political parties have for their purported constituents. It shows that the freedom of net protest remains only a freedom to express yourself, and not to act in any other capacities. Yes, Obama gave a blog-reply to the petition, but not much else. We don’t necessarily need a revolution to make substantive change, but police/party practices like the one announced by the DNC makes near impossible any movement independent of the state or political parties capable of challenging them on the serious issues that will define our future. And that is a dangerous thing.