Intro to the Anarchy of Me

…the first in an occasional series of blogs in which I locate, develop, and harness my anarchism.

After briefly considering traveling to the Slabs, to hear some bands play at the Range*, the BF and I chose bikes and anarchy for our Saturday (…duh, right?).  We rode to the Southern California Library of Social Studies for the Anarcho Cafe 2012 – and although we missed Occupy LA’s update on the General Strike planning, and although the security culture conversation was unfocused and extremely basic, I’m glad we went.  I’m glad we went because I need regular reminders that there are thoughtful energetic idealists in Los Angeles, fighting against the dominant narratives and social structures that are just so goddam difficult to fight against.

The truth is, I’m a tourist in the anarchist activist world, but I’m not going to give myself too much of a hard time about it – because if I do, I’ll go crazy.  I’m learning, seeking out perspectives, trying to understand how I can fit in and participate, looking for strategies to support myself and the people I love long term and to be engaged.  Baby steps.  I’m taking them.

Keith McHenry, one of the co-founders of Food Not Bombs, has seemingly taken no baby steps in his life, just giant leaps.  Of course I know that’s not true and that everything starts with baby steps, but shit on a shingle, that guy has been involved in a lot.  Food Not Bombs, Indy Media, a couple of San Francisco pirate radio stations, etc.  Really good stuff.  I should have asked him HOW.  How the fuck do you do that and have money for a roof over your head, medical care, etc.?  HOW.  Anyways, he seemed like a very nice guy, almost childlike, who has had and continues to have really great ideas that he acts on with great success and with positive impact on other people.

Actually, despite my comment about baby steps, it has been a pretty long trip getting to where I am in my belief system.  In my early 20s I still parroted my father’s conservative views, because they were all I knew.  I read Oil! by Upton Sinclair at age 22 or so and made my English professor’s eyes twinkle with mirth when I expressed slightly shocked confusion at the communist (I think I used the word “extreme”) wordview expressed in the pages.  I mean, the book is pro-IWW!  My brain didn’t know how to handle it.  Now, 15-16-ish years later, I credit that English class with helping me move away from the me created by my father and toward the me created by me.  Incidentally, a lot of activists, not only anarchists, deride higher education as part of the problem not the solution – as constructing cookie-cutter neoliberals (in the sense Chomsky uses it in Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and the Global Order) to carry the current world order into future.  And although I completely understand the argument, and I do agree to a large extent, I can’t agree completely – I have to credit my university education as helping me find my voice outside of the upper middle class “comfort” in which I was raised, and in which I always felt distrust even though I couldn’t explain why when I was younger.  Well done, UC system.

So.  Despite not walking away from Anarcho Cafe 2012 learning anything earth-shatteringly new and different yesterday, I was reminded of the simple important fact that there are others out there.  Community is so important.  It is waaaay too easy to get sucked into the daily grind, where it gets a little lonely and I forget that there are others out there.  So in that respect, yesterday was glorious.  AND I rode my bike with my BF and good friend, which always feels good, and which I have not been doing often enough.  I plan to remedy that sharpish.  And really, riding a bike in Los Angeles is just pure fucking existential anarchy, so. There’s that.

One thing I did come away with yesterday was a flyer about the FOOD IS A RIGHT day of action on April 1, 2012.  I remember when that terrible witch Jan Perry (watch) introduced an ordinance (that later passed) of the type being protested by the Food is a Right Day of action – my mind reeled.  To base an ordinance that forbids groups from feeding the homeless on the rationale that doing so is bad for the homeless people’s health is pretty goddam disingenuous.

My Intro End Notes:

–  I’m currently reading the aforementioned Profit Over People, and I’m about to read the new CrimethInc. book, Work.  (I’m also reading a fiction book so pulp that it barely requires brain energy to read, but what the fuck.  It’s necessary sometimes.)

–  Stimulator is one of my favorite resources, with his serious conversations always liberally spiced with levity…the levity often being at cops’ expense.  Ha.

–  Now that I’m back to writing (yay), I will get into the meat of anarchism more, in upcoming posts.  Don’t you worry.

 

 

*Something like twelve cop cars showed up to the show at the Range.  A friend whose band played said that the cops read about the bands playing there online so they thought it was a music festival…but that doesn’t really explain why the cops felt they needed to be there.  Goddammit, I hate cops.  More about that in another post.

Tags: anarchy