Fair Trade, Organizing & the WTO

Alright, I feel dirty for mentioning Dance Floor Dale in my last post. As the campy deejay at my now defunct roller rink used to say, "Let's take a little moment now and slow it down for the sweethearts.



So yesterday I wrote emails to some politicians on behalf of my sister-in-law(ish) in order to pit them against each other and create a sense of competitiveness around a good cause. Basically the point is to get folks to agree to purchase Fair Trade for 30-days. It made me miss working at nonprofit organizations. I don't miss the low pay or having people treat me like an idiot whenever I suggest social media campaigns. But I saw a 10-year anniversary poster for the 1999 WTO rally and am reminded of how much I've changed. I believe most of the same things, but my approach has changed dramatically. I'm trying to catch flies with honey, and trust me, when you're full of as much piss and vinegar as I am, it's actually pretty difficult. My old self would call my new self an "armchair activist." My new self realizes that I have always had a roof, support network and the voice to change the attitudes and perceptions of my peers. There is no big bad evil. There's only stupidity, apathy and life-saving flashes of brilliance.

Terrorism vs. Activism

A few days ago the guy who preemptively set fire to this year's Burning Man was arrested for trying to blow up Grace Cathedral with some explosives tied to his chest.

This is the point when a harmless kook becomes a deadly terror. I'm never great at reading this, which is why 2 wks ago a man in the Mission called me a "flat ass Jap" and then wanted to fight. We didn't, but judging by the fact that he was high as a kite and 120lbs, I'd say it'd have been a fair fight.

KOOK TO CHAOS
I'm reading a book entitled, "The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground". Before now, I just assumed that apart from the Black Panthers, everybody was a drug-loving peacenik during the sixties. Not so. There is a whole camp that went out looking for a fight in the perestroika/tumbling regimes sense. The book starts slow with a backgrounder to civil rights but things have just gotten bad and Cathy Wilkerson has killed 3 friends by blowing up her parent's Greenich Village home. Bombs do that.

WHEN GOOD KIDS GO BAD
When I was 20 everything was black and white. Capitalists WERE pigs, the system WAS corrupt and I was gonna build a universe composed completely of sunshine, found-object art and hippie feminist zines. I just needed to either tumble the system or get off the grid. After reading this book, I've been looking into sixties factoids. Did you know that in 1967, while the Grateful Dead were popularizing the Haight-Ashbury "turn on, tune in, drop out" experience, Dr. Ted Kaczynski was teaching mathematics at Berkeley? Imagine Unabomber tutorial sessions. I'm beginning to realize that the activists in the sixties were just as atomized as we are today. I'm also beginning to realize that the really hardcore ones were kinda freaky.