What is the Court of Miracles?

A few years ago I was watching The Hunchback of Notre Dame (I admit it, it was the disney version). In the story there is an underground city of gyspies called "the court of miracles". This place was contrasted to "the court of justice," where Frolo, the minister of justice in Paris, was in charge. The court of justice was a place where those in power imposed their rule on the people of the city. The court of miracles was the place where the marginalized and persecuted built community outside of and against the ruling relations. Of course, that's not how the disney movie put it, but I have a tendency to read a lot into disney cartoons.

Anyhow, I was excited about this idea. In a lot of ways it connected to my research into the resistance of enslaved Africans during the era of the transatlantic slave trade. The court of miracles was a sort of kilombo (runaway/maroon community), where new relationships were built beyond and against the current system.

Little did I know how accurate this comparison was. A week or so ago, I was reading Karl Marx's account of the enclosurement movement in Europe. This movement basically turned land previously used for subsistence agriculture into land for pasturing sheep, whose wool was sold for profit as part of the emerging cloth manufacturing industry. What this meant was that thousands of people were thrown off their land and turned into vagabonds. As if this wasn't enough, the States of Europe passed laws which said that anyone able to work but found begging or wandering about was subject to cruel torture, enslavement, and even execution. Against this persecution many of the uprooted formed clandestine communities. Marx writes that "by the middle of the 17th century a kingdom of vagabonds (truands) was established in Paris" (Capital Vol. 1, pgs. 736-7). What this connection does is relate being a vagabond to two things: being dispossesed and creating new, autonomous and insurgent forms of community.

That suites me just fine! I consider myself a present-day vagabond. And when I look around me and see folks who are un(der)employed, who do not own the places in which they live, who must slave to survive or face the consequences---when I see all of this and the despair that it breeds, I know that we need autonomous spaces more than ever. The Court of Miracles, my blog, is the digital expression of my efforts to create this kind of space. It's the idea of a mobile community of resistance.

But there is something important about the disney movie. In that movie the citizens of the court of miracles are also the people who make the feast of fools (a peasant festival) come alive. During the festival, the people who usually must hide, come forward and turn the world upside-down and inside-out. Everyone in all of Paris joins in, breaking out of the roles proscribed by dominant social relations. This is crucial because revolution, resistance, and transformation are often at their most radical when, through expressions of creativity and communal celebration, people re-connect to what is essentially human in us all. Just a few thoughts on a few lines that made a few more connections....

Dispatches & A Communiqué

9 May 2009 (friday)
at approximately 11:30pm my neighbor Cole and I decide to head down to the cornerstore. Everything seems normal. My neighbor purchases a cigarello and goes back out to the car. I wait in line to buy some cookies to go with the masala tea we plan on brewing. The man in front of me takes longer than expected to purchase his food (I use the term loosely. Most of the "food" in these stores has little nutritive value). In come a few Black guys. Our eyes meet. I become hyper-conscious of the fact that I am wearing my rainbow jacket (looking FABULOUS, for the record). There is a moment of tense uncertainty as I am looked over by each of them. I purchase the cookies and get into the car where Cole is waiting. Once in the car I exhale.

"It's probably not a good idea to wear that in this neighborhood at this time of night," Cole 'informs' me. Of course, comrades, I am very aware of the dangers of being Black, working class, and Queer. He continues to 'educate' me:

"I know wearing that jacket probably has something to do with your values, but you gotta think about where we live." I remain silent. I wonder if he knows what his words mean in the context of my struggle. He doesn't know. Doesn't know how I joined this army whose struggle is the right to be. Doesn't know that these colors are not about "pride". They are a declaration of independence, a declaration of war, a challenge, a refusal to be made to hide.

"...I wouldn't mind so much if I was a girl," he says. For a moment I'm confused. Then the meaning strikes me. He means that people assume that he and I are together, or at least that both of us are faggots, and that that is dangerous for us both.

"It's not that I don't want to drive with you wearing that shirt. I mean, it's your call. But a quick change of shirts can save a lot of trouble." The blow I had expected doesn't come from the men who eyed me threateningly. It comes now, when I thought I was 'safe'. I say something about realizing the dangers and look out the window.

Cole and I moved in to the same duplex on the same day. After we met we went to the Wal-Mart to get things for our apartments. I was wearing the same jacket then. I remember we were standing in the check-out line. The cashier woman was talking to Cole and then she realized we had come to shop together. The air shifted subtly under the inquiry of her gaze. The conversation continued as if all was normal, but the tempature seemed to have risen three or four degrees. I remember thinking after that, each time Cole and I went somewhere together, that he was really cool because he didn't mind people's assumptions.

But on friday that changed. He did mind certain assumptions in certain places, at certain times. That is, he did mind being put in danger by the assumptions of the queer-bashing fascists who frequent the streets in working-class, Black neighborhoods. In some ways I didn't blame him. He never signed up for my crusade. I hadn't asked him if he would be my comrade in my people's struggle for the right to exist anywhere we went.

While he was educating me on the dangers of my political fashions I thought about about Bob Moses from SNCC. I remembered reading about how he had been assaulted by a police officer and by racists and how he had kept going. Beating after beating he kept fighting. Why? He had faced that violence head-on because he needed to break the fear that kept Black folks from standing up for their rights. I think to myself that I would take a beating for being militantly and unabashedly queer in a Black working-class neighborhood. I think of the queens and the transpeople of color who I've always revered for their courage to be Queer in working-class environments. I refuse to only be "out" in white, middle-class areas. I think to myself that it is worth it to continue to wear my declaration of war unabashedly, even if it means violence. Because I intend to conquer the fear that set me running last year when the queer-bashers in Raleigh chased me down the street.

Of course, war requires comrades, strategy, and arms. Perhaps I should learn martial arts and carry a good weapon or two. And perhaps I should inform people that my life is a struggle and that walking down the street with me at night could mean joinging the fight whether they believe in it or not. And I think to myself that more than anything I would love to live with other militant Queer people and put a sign on our door:

BEWARE: SOMETIMES QUEERS BASH BACK!

12 May 2009 (monday)
I go to the dentist to get a filling (I'm supposed to get two, but I can only afford one). While the dentist is working he tells me, since I'm such a good guy and since the economy is so bad, he'll do the other filling 'on the house'. I thank him as sincerely as I can with a drill and a wedge in my mouth. He then proceeds to ponder out loud with the assistant whether or not good deeds get one into heaven. My appreciation turns a bit sour. The "charity" for which he is praising himself is a mere $200, chump change in comparison to the $2,000+ I've paid out in the past two months.

"Oh well," he says, giving up on the idea of buying his way into heaven, "Maybe St. Peter will just bless me in some other way."

The receptionist at the dentist office has not been informed of the dentist's "charity" and asks me to pay the full price for both fillings. "I thought you could only afford one. Did you change your mind?" I swallow my pride and tell her that I can only afford the one but that the dentist said the other was on the house. "Oh!" she says, and makes the extra $200 disappear with a few key strokes.

As she looks up from her computer screen she sees my rainbow bracelet. "Oh! My son has one of those. They handed them out at his school." Surprised I ask what school. Turns out it's an elementary. I'm a bit puzzled.

"All colors, all cultures, all equal," she pines. "That's our motto!" I look at her face beaming with pride. I won't tell her what this bracelet has cost me. I won't tell her what I think about her son's "inclusive" school or what I think about her crusade on behalf of "the ESL population" of the school. I won't tell her that I am not set at ease by the fact that she was willing to be a surrogate mother for a gay couple. I simply smile and nod when she says, under her breath, that some of best friends are gay couples (I must admit I am shocked that she uses this phrase that today even most liberal white folks know is cliché and evidence of patronism). I won't say that "safety" and "inclusion" is a commodity like everything else, available only to folks like her who can afford it. That I am going home to a place where battles must be fought to make it safe to be Queer. Where bracelets and rhetoric must be made into weapons rather than flags. I smile and pay my bill.

War Is Never "Just" A Metaphor
Scattered across the planet are people who refuse to be silent. Who refuse to wear heterosexual camouflage and fiercely lead the attack against our oppression. These fighters--effeminists, trans folks, queens, butches, femmes, crossdressers, androgynous sabateurs--require your solidarity. We are presently engaged in an all-out battle to break the encirclement of our bodies and our desires and every bit of ammunition is crucial.

The war is not about "rights," comrades and allies. It's about power. Perhaps this power seems incosequential to you. Perhaps the struggle to wear what one pleases and to love who one wants to love seems like a minor thing next to the struggle for housing or for an end to hunger and AIDS or for the abolition of capital(ism). Perhaps you think my "militarist" language is hyperbole and histrionic. But consider this companer@s: the struggle against oppression is and can only be carried out by those who fight with their entire selves. We are not fighting for higher wages or better environmental protection or better schools. We are fighting for better lives. For dignity. For a more human world, less ugly and more loving. Ours is not a struggle "next to" the material struggles. It is one within them.

Within the fight for better conditions are people---living, loving, beautiful human beings---whose unexercised potentials and capacities alone constitute both the source and the subject of our liberation struggles. Ours is a war against the limit on human freedom, the impoverishment of human capacity by poverty, fear, abuse, patriarchy, violence, imperialism, heterosexism, white supremacy, and despair. What besides the blossoming of our very human love could be worth all this effort? And what besides the power to defend our right to be free can secure our liberation?

Those who live this struggle know that it's not merely about "discrimination" or "prejucide". War is not "just a metaphor." Homophobia is not an attitude, it's a fist, it's a threat, it's the fear of going home because something violent lurks there. War is a concept that captures our experience and re-organizes it in a way that lets us fight back. This is why I speak this way. This is why I appeal to our allies to understand the nature of our struggle and to our people to understand that we can change things when we learn to organize and to fight.

Concerning change and fighting back: resolutions and legislation are a beginning, but they will not be enough. Legislation does not protect us on the street at night. Resolutions do not help us defeat the strategy of suicide and despair imposed on us. "Rights" do not reach into the "private" world of the family where so much oppression against Queer people occurs. Nor will police patrols, the regulation of families by the government, or "diversity" training make us safe. Ours is a struggle to organize ourselves and change the conditions and consciousness of our communities. Our is a fight to unite our forces into guerilla units to advance the struggle everywhere by the power of our own hands, lips, libidos, words and fists.

Public displays of Queer affection defended by our strength and our willingness to defend one another and our homes are one way that we can begin. Not as some performance protest, but as an aspect of our everday lives, where we need to be able to love and defend our love. Challenging all the faggot jokes because we know we will be backed up by our comrades with whom we have committed to changing the world. Keeping an eye out for our Queer youth and elders who are still prisoners of war (that is who hate and hurt themselves because they are trapped in the psychological prisons manufactured for us). Preparing ourselves to help those who need it. Training ourselves to listen and to respond to the trauma and violence that characterize our collective experience. These and more are the kinds of tractics and strategies we must consider if we intend to win this war.

Viva Vagabundencia!
Sodomía o muerta!

from the mountains of desire,
Don Petro of the Southern Liberation Front

"Military" Spending

This year has seen a flurry of government "intervention" in the global economy as a result of the cascading "crises" that have struck the u.s. and the world from every direction. While I would love to go into a discussion of what these "crises" really are and why they actually benefit certain people (Exxon Mobil recently recorded the highest profits EVER recorded). Unfortunately I am still compiling my data and sharpening my arguments. So, alas, we'll have to settle with a small aspect of the issue: the recent request from the White House for more funds for the occupation of Iraq.

Why take a look at this? Because nestled within this "Iraq Supplemental" bill are some very interesting allocations of funds. One is a $770 million earmark for food aid for countries sinking into mass starvation as a result of the current explosion of food prices. The other is an appropriation of $1.4 billion for "Plan Mexico" or the "Mérida Initiative," which is supposed to set up a "regional security cooperative initiative" between the u.s. and mexican repressive military forces.

Although earmarking $1.4 billion in a bill supposedly about Iraq seems shady to me, it could be argued that they are both military expenditures. We will return to this point. But what about food aid? Why is that part of a war bill?

We can begin to understand the connection between war and food aid policy when we look at the social rebellion that so-called "food shortages" are causing. Under capitalism "need" only exists when there is money behind it. Economists call this "effective demand". Other ideologues call it "dollar democracy" (one 'votes' with one's income....if one has an income).

Despite all of this, sometimes people get angry and desperate enough to vote with their fists. People have nasty habit of thinking they have a right to eat and live. At least people in Haiti and many other places think so...Such rebellious attitudes can topple governments and threaten the rules of private property. They encourage the idea that people should take what they need from an unjust system and those who are hoarding food to make profits.

Bush, expressing concern as rocketing world food prices intensified unrest in poor countries, promised...that the United States would take the lead as hunger takes hold of a greater swathe of the developing world.

One solution would be to force an increase of income (notice that NO major pundit is suggesting that the solution to current economic crises is increased income for the poor and lower segments of the working class). But this would cut into profits. Instead, capitalists and their governments use "aid" (in Bangladesh corporations are providing food for their poorest workers--to keep them working--rather than paying them better). Rather than increase real wages, they choose instead to "provide" a little food. Of course, along with this "aid" comes stipulations. For example, of the $770 million, $395 million is marked for food, while the other $375 million is to be put in the hands of the US Agency for International Development, so they can continue their neo-liberal "structural adjustment" as a requirement for aid. (Anyone who has ever been to a government office for welfare knows this game very well). Failing to follow the rules can mean starving--a useful club to hold in a period when the largest rice producing countries are talking about forming a "rice cartel" to control prices like OPEC does oil and when workers get that itch to do "unwise" things together.

What I'm trying to emphasize is the use of food "aid" as a tool of social control. Once we grasp this we can see how these policies link up with the general policies of "low intensity, perpetual warfare," where the point of militarism, strictly conceived, is only one aspect of a broad and brutal form of social control (rather than the obliteration of an enemy). Food aid is a carrot, the military is the stick. The occupation of Iraq is one piece in the puzzle that includes "Plan Mexico's", the military arm of NAFTA, the record oil profits of Exxon, etc.

Amilcar Cabral, leader of the national liberation movement in Guinea-Bissau during the 70's dealt with a similar tactic being used by the colonial Portuguese government. While the government was drenching rebellious villages in napalm, they simultaneously were providing services and goods for those who cooperated with them. The Portuguese, like the French and u.s. in Vietnam, set up "strategic hamlets," where peasants could live and receive aid. Of course, these hamlets were isolated from the rebellious villages and kept under strict (though benevolent) control. The people of Guinea-Bissau called this "the policy of smiling and bloodshed". An appropriate name.

Meanwhile NAFTA's inclusion of Mexico in the "first world" doesn't seem to be going over too well with the vast majority of the Mexican people. And so, there is a need for better planes, helicopters, and criminal "justice" funding in order to help the Mexican people understand that resistance will not be tolerated. "Plan Mexico" is one and the same with the continuation of "Operation Iraqi Freedom".

Today the u.s. government is a conspirator in a global policy of guns and grain which amounts to about the same as "smiling and bloodshed": death. The fact that the "aid" is part of a military appropriation bill which seeks funding for the further strengthening of the Mexican military and the occupation forces in Iraq should tell us something about what's going on. At moments like these it is essential to remind ourselves that the State is nowhere near exhausted as an institutional bulwark of capital(ism). In moments of "crisis" when food prices and profits sky-rocket, the State makes possible the continued accumulation of capital by means of crisis.

Like addicted gamblers, the rulers of the world couldn't be more excited about the current economic crises. But they are also worried that someone might find out they've stacked the deck and things might get ugly. So, they hedge their bed with a few million dollars of grains and a few billion dollars of guns.

Keep your eyes on the connections comrades!