Durham

yesterday i moved into my new apartment. i burned incense, set up the altar on the mantle of the (bricked-in) fire place, and put on the afro-peruvian/flamenco music mixes that Belia sent me. "i am finally here," i thought to myself. i carefully unfolded the fan Justyna brought me from sevilla, spain and placed it on the altar next to the tibetan prayer wheel Adam gave me. the room, strange because it was new, slowly filled with familiar and loving memories and presences.

i had spent the day at Darion's garden a few miles outside of town. mostly i prepared potato eyes for planting. but i also sat and soaked in the environment from the hammock: the air, the trees, the red clay soil and the flowers with the densely yellow petals, the sun. i adjusted to being in a place where the language of interaction was foreign to me and felt just fine. i listened as people straddled two languages discussing tomorrow's community assembly. what was this feeling? contentment. being in harmony with where i am.

when i got home i sat on the porch, looking up and down the street at nothing in particular. (how wonderful porch-sitting is!). the neighbors waved from their own porches, introduced themselves and asked a few things about me.

durham feels good.

sometime towards the late evening it started pouring down rain, so, naturally, i went outside to sit on the porch and listen to god's applause. a handsome young man was sitting on the porch of the apartment next door. he said his name was Cole. after introductions he made his way over to my porch. my apartment is one half of a duplex, so the two porches, though closed off and separated by a foot or so of ground, are pretty close. so there we sat in the rain talking about where we're from and why we came to durham.

he talked about working on farms, construction, and in factories (mostly in georgia) and i talked about hotel work, school and being queer. we debated the pros and cons of socialism and workplace democracy and talked about weddings, love, and rain. he brought out his sketch book where he works on mechanical design and i brought out some of my poetry. he talked to me about being in love with his fiancé (damn! the good ones are so ofteb hetero/taken) and asked me my thoughts about god.

why am i saying all of this? because in one day i spent more time in warm conversation and environments in durham than i have had in a long time. i was living in space that wasn't hostile to me. a space that affirmed me, asked me questions, wanted my opinion. these people who had never known me took a kind interest and piqued my curiosity. we invited each other into our spaces almost spontaneously and share resources just as freely.

Cole's fed me two bars of chocolate in just two days and today we went shopping for house stuff together. Darion helped me move and is teaching me to drive a stick shift tractor from the 1940's. I gave Cole a carpet, made us a jumbalaya dinner, and am letting him use the washer/dryer in my apartment. I gave Darion some books on agriculture and have been discussing garden plans with him and offering analyses of the current economic crisis. it's amazing really. strangers who want to become friends; this immediate mutuality between us that i have had trouble finding my way back to over the past few years.

i introduced Cole to Darion and they talked excitedly about rigging car motors to propane, fixing motorcycles, and other mechanical things that i have no idea about. i just sat and soaked up the enjoyment of seeing two people share and inspire each other.

i have said that all of this is spontaneous, but it's not really. there's a sense of a shared experience, despite all our difference (Darion from méxico, Cole from georgia, me from michigan). we all stay as far from bourgee folks and have been on the subordinated end of a lot of power relations. there's a certain point of view that is common but unspoken: an anti-authoritarian ethic, a love of sharing our passions and listening to those of others (since work so often crowds out our passions), and a talent for relaxing.

this is not to say that we don't have different ideas, we surely do. but we could see our lives being complimentary, rather than antagonistic. and, of course, other people have other responses to working-class experience. but we had chosen to build a communal approach to the world with our experiences in a way both radically common to all of us and fundamentally unique for each of us. it was good to feel this with new people, to remember that it's possible, miraculous, and common. here we are, making and re-making working-class culture.

in just these past two days new relationships have established themselves. soon we'll be building bookshelves together and planting peanuts. Cole agrees now that workplace democracy is a great idea and i realize that i need to learn how to repair basic mechanical things and drive a tractor. Darion and i will go to lunch together for the period that i'm unemployed (his job is up the street from my apt) and put in a good word for Cole's girlfriend who's trying to get a job where he works.

already, durham feels like home.

The Land & I

it's been raining for almost a week now. the land is healing and i'm beginning to as well. the grasses are springing out of every nook and cranny and the wild scallions give the air everywhere near an open field a pungent hint of onion. the other morning, as i was walking home with my head bowed, i noticed bunches of wild strawberries, their white flower petals thrown open, loose and casual, like the legs of unchaste and unashamed lovers. a layer of yellow pollen covers everything, including anything i leave in front of my open window. the tulip trees unwrap their fleshy blossoms.

and that night that there was a thunderstorm, i can't remember the last time i sat by my window with such a sense of peace.

a people and their land live together, suffer together, celebrate together. north carolina, like myself, has been experiencing a drought. the worst one in recorded history (they say). and that makes me trust her. it's funny. i don't think anyone for at least 1,000 miles really know who i am or what the hell i'm doing. it's only when i see the raucus dandelions spurting out of the newly wetted soil that i feel like someone knows what it's like. the river, who must run downstream nevertheless meanders, unsure if gravity is really all that he should be following. i understand. i know which direction i'm going, but i too doubt, deter, meander in order to come a little closer to someone i love.

you woulnd't believe how the world changes when it rains for a week. the whole world turns green. the impoverished knoll behind my apartment building bursts into life. never mind that the pampered tulips who have been shipped in from the netherlands, fed fertilizers, and kept in the cool shadows of the pines; never mind that they too are blooming. on that hill where the weeds eke out a living, that's where you'll learn something about life. about me. only there do the plants lift their brilliant banners to honor the advent of moisture. the whole earth knows what a carnival is!

rain is applause for life.

A Discussion of Electoral Politics pt3

Here is the last email exhanged between Gary and I:

Peace,

First, I also lease my labor and no-one could ever own it but me. Thank you for the crucial correction. In the shop, when people ask me, "where's your boss?" I've been known to respond "I don't have a boss on this planet, let alone in this building" - I think thats a correction in the spirit of yours.

I guess my thoughts on your response are this. I agree with your analysis that he creates a narrative of unity in a framework that does not challenge capitalism, and significanly downplays a solidarity based on an understanding of how racism creates different levels of oppression within the working class. I think this may be his genuine analysis though it also allows for him to attract capital investment. I think in part though the Democrats got much more investment in part because their policy allows for capital to grow, but also because Capital assumed they were going to be the winners of the election and wanted to build that relationship, because I think there are substanative ways where Republican policy is much more capital friendly and working people -fuck em a over.

When my Hotel brings in a nice smiling African American woman like Julie Coker, as a new General Manager, she is purely an attempt to co-op, as she answer to exactly the same capital aggression as her the predaccessor who was an ass-hole, I don't know that Obama fits completely into her place in the metaphor - which is the question of to what extent is he a reprsentative of the ruling class.

But I think the other thing is...in my hotel. The Front Desk petitioned to unionize unanimously. The Hyatt's response was to give them a $2/hr raise ( a huge fuckin' raise!). That was purposely designed to co-opt them, but I think it will be a matter of leadership whether or not that group of workers will go from just getting the raise to also getting health care, retirement funding, protection against disicipline, and the ability to negotiate over working conditions that comes with being a full fledged Union member. My point is, I think, I don't want to fall into the "I rather George Bush because he tells me he is fucking me over" mantra, I want to develop leadership within a social movement that can challenge people to know that they deserve more than the crumbs of the Democratic party, and all the while be using the electoral system to act much more sophisitatedly in our own interest.

paz

A Discussion of Electoral Politics pt2

Continuing the discussion begun in the last two posts, here is my response to Gary's email:

Salutations,

Yeah, I agree with you that his approach to talking about u.s. history was more than just a few comments. There were incredibly powerful truths that he was giving some voice to. But there is an incredibly subtle but meaningful way that he spoke about this which is co-optative. Talking about racism as a "legacy" of slavery and Jim Crow rather than an inherent way that capital organizes labor hierarchically, talking about corporate "greed" as a "culture" and emphasizing "inside deals" and scandals rather than talking about profit and capital as structurally opposed to worker's well-being, etc.

It is true that what he put forward was indeed different from what the mass media usually presents. I was particularly impressed by his discussion of resentments and consciousness in Black and white communities and the discussions that are going on beyond "polite company".

Yet, I feel it is necessary to see his activities as strategic responses of a particular sector of a class to political pressures. Obama has been forced to take up this discussion. We cannot lose sight of the fact that his narratives are directly related to the denunciation of militant Black nationalist narratives. While one may or may not agree with the rhetoric, the substance of Black nationalism is Black power. Coming together across "race" lines, if it is to be a unity of mutual respect, must mean that Black folks come with their own power. Obama's "unity" erases and even joins in being suspect in attempts to build Black autonomous power. He characterizes it as "left over" resentment. Further, he suggests that really we all have the same interests. That if we simply fight for better schools, jobs, etc, we will all move forward. But this fails to recognize that this does not solve the gap in power/resources between sectors of the working-class. Only power among the most oppressed can do that. But he cleverly undermines the basis for autonomous and militant Black organizing.

Let me clarify my position on Obama as a strategic enemy. I see the electoral system as a battleground between interests like any other social sphere. On the federal level the grounds are incredibly skewed to ruling class interests, but even then these interests must respond to pressure from many different angles. I don't think the struggle for democracy and the vote was meaningless. It creates new pressures and opportunities, it remakes the organization of power on the battlefield. When I said that Obama was my strategic enemy I meant to communicate that while although he represents a good defensive choice among the representatives of ruling class interests, it is crucial to remember that he does indeed represent an attempt to salvage capitalism and make it more attractive to workers. Obama, like any other president, would oppose any attempt to overthrow the system. Not because he's Obama, but because he has been financed and supported by the very corporate elite who he rhetorically critiques, as you point out. [For the record, Global Hyatt/Microtel leases my labor. I own it. Small distinction that is crucial.] He would never go for an end to private ownership of major worksites. He would defend private property to the death...well, maybe some soldier's death, probably not his own.

I do think he is a better candidate than the republicans and perhaps better than Clinton (I don't really have a position on Clinton/Obama). But I think it is essential to remember that he represents an attempt to reassert the power of capital. He may give out important concessions, but he is fundamentally a representative of the ruling class(es). I think it is possible for the ruling class, or sections of it, to be rhetorically critical of certain aspects of the social system. This is even necessary at various times and is sometimes combined with more social spending by government and more leniency towards certain social demands. But they are still ruling class policies in that they give concessions with the ultimate goal of maintaining power and will fight like hell against radical movements.

I think he's worth voting for, however (if you've decided that federal elections are a place you're gonna fight). If you wanna vote for me you'll probably need to move to durham, nc. look for me or someone I really support in 5-10 years. By then I'm hoping there will be something worthy of the title "People's Republic of Durham".

paz

A Discussion of Electoral Politics

My friend Gary and I have been exchanging views around Obama and the meaning and opportunities of the current prez election campaign based on some of the things I said in the previous post. After we sent a few emails back and forth Gary suggested that we post the conversation so that others could participate and/or comment. I thought that would be a great idea so the next few posts will be made up of the discussion that we began. If you want to have your contribution posted then just email it to me. Otherwise just add your comments as usual.

We'll begin with Gary's first reply:

Peace Sendolo,

I also found myself moved by Obama's speech and am struggling with that.

I found your ideas helpful in processing my own.

To be honest I was moved not just by certain parts, but by the worldview he put forward, a view which included recognizing America's sin in slavery and it's legacy still existing today, a critique of the Reagan Coalition of hate, and a call to move forward by recognizing a stake in one another, and even described racial tensions as a distraction from the attacks from corporate culture.

I feel like much of this worldview is still very much in conflict with the popular media affirmed narrative of America, but that he not only put it forward but tried to organize his audience around the truth in this view by connecting it to narratives they could relate to. Of course it's true that one such narrative was American exceptionalism and nationalism.

I think our current political system, its electoral process and such are inextricably linked to ruling class power, but I don't know what extent it is true that Barack Obama's engagement of that process makes him so linked that he himself becomes a strategic enemy.

Hmm. Though its worth recognizing that his engagement of this process has demanded that he get a Chief Financial Officer by the name of Penny Pritzker who actually own both your labor and mine and is an executor of the corporate culture he critiqued.

Well I guess I'll vote for him unless I find out you're running.

La Otra America

So, I just finished watching Obama's speech on race and I need to be honest. I was moved. at various points i wanted him to say something terrible because I know that he is essentially a representative of the ruling class and I hated being moved by someone I know is my strategic enemy. And, at various points, he did say terrible things, like blaming "radical islam" for violence in the middle east and calling israel an ally. But by and large Obama said things that...spoke to me. Dammit, i never thought i would say that, but it's true. Does that mean I support him? No. But it does mean I have to write at least one more post on someone I have been trying to move out of the center of my writing. Well, here goes...

About a year ago I finished reading Lawrence Goodwyn's The Populist Moment, a book about one of the most amazing mass movements in u.s. history. And one of the things that really impressed me was when the historian who wrote the book characterized the populist movement as a struggle for the soul of the country; a struggle to determine whether everyday people would finally take hold of democracy or whether the wealthy would beat back the people and impose a still more oppressive system. I was reminded of something I had read in The Many-Headed Hydra, a quote by Thomas Rainborough (a radical of the English revolution): "Either poverty must use democracy to destroy the power of property, or property in fear of poverty will destroy democracy".

The populist movement was an attempt of the "plain people" (as they called themselves) to use democracy and organizing to destroy the corporate power that was killing them. Theirs was indeed a class struggle. But Goodwyn emphasized that it was a class struggle in a time when it was thought that the wealthy could be subdued. When "America" actually meant (for some/many people) the triumph of the working-classes over aristocracies. Today, however, the oppressed do not think of "America" as a beacon of hope. America is the symbol of the new aristocracy, of the power of property and wealth to destroy democracy. But the populists were not ready to concede "America," its land, wealth, labor, creativity, or people, to the ruling classes. Theirs was a fight to unite the plain people, the hands and hearts that were this country. For them America was working class. it was the corporate bourgeoisie which was "anti-american".

Being raised a Black nationalist, I was weened on discourses like those of Frederick Douglass' July 4th speech, in which he says that the day of independence for whites is a lie and a hypocrisy for enslaved Black people. I was raised to understand that "America" had gotten rich on the blood and sweat of Black folks, Brown folks, the genocide of the indigenous, labor of Asians, and the pillage of the world. Later on as I became more and more attracted to marxism, I began to understand that "America" had been built on the backs of "white" immigrants as well. America became the metaphysical entity that embodied the exploitation and destruction of the entire world.

But this past summer I was struck, once again, by another vision. It happened when I was reading James & Grace Lee Boggs. In The American Revolution and in Revolution & Evolution in the 20th Century, and also in Grace Lee's aurobiography, Living for Change, I found a different way of seeing America. James Boggs once said "I love this country not only because my ancestors' blood is in the soil but because of its potential, what I believe it can become." Clearly it was not the America of corporate executives and power with impunity which he loved. No. It is the America that is the living and the now passed people who struggled for a more just society. The Boggs' maintainted that in order to change something, you must love it. I was reminded of Paulo Freire who said: "If I do not love the world--if I do not love life--if I do not love people--I cannot enter into dialogue" (Pedagogy of the Oppressed).

Reading and meditating on these things I realized for the first time that the vast majority of people in this country have a real material and humanist interest in ending the system of social oppression that holds us all down. I realized that there does indeed exist a broad working-class interest and even consciousness. For the first time, reading these texts, I was consumed by a faith in the ability of our people to achieve an American Revolution. I have not really been a Black nationalist since (though I don't suggest that anyone test me on my fierce stance on the right of Black people for autonomy in struggle and in culture).

But my experience over the years is what has made these readings so meaningful. I have spent the last few years in a pitched struggle with the people I love the most around issues of race, gender, sexuality, and class. I know that these divisions are real and that they must be confronted. But I believe that it is extremism to declare that they are differences that cannot be united. That unity, as Amilcar Cabral said, must be one built through struggle. Queer people, women, people of color, and all sorts of other folks must have their own autonomous power to demand that unity does not mean limiting the issues to the lowest common denominator. Yet our struggle with one another is not a struggle against one another. It is a struggle for unity, a unity so that we may struggle to transform the world. Paulo, when he spoke of dialogue, was speaking of the love that must infuse the struggle among comrades in the effort to change our world.

I sit here today and know in my heart that the unity that I am struggling for is a unity, dynamic and characterized by the autonomy of its members, of the working-class. I do not mean simply those who work in factories. I mean those who are forced to labor for others in order to simply earn enough to live. Some live more or less decently, in this country and around the world, but we are all workers in the sense that our labor does not belong to us and instead contributes to the amassing of wealth, power, and tyranny amongst a very small minority of people.

Now, what does this have to do with Obama? You see, Obama speaks to the desire of people to come together and transform the world. He knows that we crave this and need it. His messages are crafted to cut through the cynicism and rally people together. The trouble, however, is around what he is rallying them. The ruling class, here in the u.s. and around the world, is in a panic. No one believes in the system anymore. So many people are jaded and dissatisfied. Obama represents the most visionary arm of the ruling class trying to mobilize the working-class of this country to achieve what nothing else can: a more powerful country.

They want a more powerful United States. That is, amore powerful military, a more "competitive" economy, a more powerful corporate-state system with which to meet the new challenges in a world no longer beholden to u.s. power. They are doing their best to rally people around the unity of the nation-state. The idea of a unity between people, the political-economic system, and the rulers. That's what a nation-state is. The conservatives are doing it one way, by declaring that some people are "un-american". The democrats do this in another way, by telling us that we are all americans.

The truth is that the vast majority of us are Americans. I mean this in the most expansive sense. We are the people whose lives are tied to the history of the Americas (plural). We are the people whose future is irreducibly interwoven with the life of the land of these two continents. We are the inheritors of a vast, tragic, triumphant history. We are indeed American, from the southern tip of Chile to the northern reaches of Canada. But we are not the united states. We are not the ruling class. The unity of the American peoples is not a government, but a comradery, a solidarity of many peoples; the circulation of struggles and culture and hope.

When the indigenous peoples of Chiapas speak my African heart knows the language. When my friend Jacob speaks of his struggles, I know them. I have learned that I have a place in my sould for Poland because I know Justyna. I have felt an obligation to understand or at least listen to the efforts of straight men to love and be loved. When women speak about patriarchy I am moved because I am implicated and I am asked to join in something common. This is La Otra America, the Other America which continues to be robbed and humiliated.

Today I know that if we are to struggle together and love together we need to bring forward our vision of La Otra America. Unity is not unity of a country or a continent. It is the unity of many different peoples struggling against the various and vicious ways that capitalism manifests: slavery, peonage, unemployment, alienation, work, schooling, prisons, starvation, AIDS run rampant...

Our unity must come from our unique heritage(s). All of the America(n)s have been subjected to the domination of the United States (which contrary to rhetoric includes the comprador states that claim to represent the peoples of latin America).

Obama teaches us something: unity is powerful. But we must struggle against the false unity with the ruling class. What unity is this that deprives so many of simple needs so that some may live in grotesque luxury? What unity can there be between those who buy and sell jobs, retirement, whole countries, food, the land and water itself only for profit and allow the vast majorities to suffer? No, this is not the unity we want.

The unity of the working-classes, against capital, against exploitation, against the degredation of women, queer people, the environment. Against the marginalization and humiliation of people of color. Against the attempt to erase the radical history, culture and dignity of our french-, english-, irish-, jewish- American comrades. The struggle for the soul of a continent is ours and in it we join the struggle of a planet, of many histories.

Obama's appeal is really an appeal to what is, at its heart, the awakening of many people to the understanding of the need for unity in order to bring about change. I am profoundly convinced, however, that this "change" must mean an end to the capitalist system which is racist, hetero-patriarchal, imperialist, and alienating. The task before us is to show that La Otra America, the American peoples, rather than the united states, have an interest in the overthrow of the global system of capital. The task is to grasp the fact that in some ways Obama is speaking to working-class consciousness and that it is a representation of the current moment's uncertainty that the ruling class must reach out in such a way.

The contradiction is that once it is grasped that the broad, collective interest is the overthrow of corporate capitalism, then the ruling class will carry out a full-scale attack on this unity. They want to include themselves in our unity and elevate their interests as the common interests. We must show that, while our interests are many, it is only the wealthy elite who have a continued interest in the maintenance and deepening of capitalism. Our struggle for unity must be clear on this point or "unity" will simply become the fascist unity that erupted in the wake of the economic crises of the world war period.

Now, more than ever, when even politicians in the republican party have to at least appear opposed to corporate greed in order to win over even the small sector of the American people who vote, we need to be part of building a new vision and a new unity. An anti-capitalist unity, a working-class unity in which the people(s) are many but the struggle, for dignity and liberation, is shared. This does not mean we reduce everything to 'economic' issues (wages, benefits, etc). It means that we, each of us committed to real change, come to understand that the endless imposition of work by capital and the endless accumulation of wealth by capitalist is the single biggest barrier to having time with those we love, living in harmony with our ecosystems, having enough to eat, learning and growing, loving how we want to, travelling, becoming artists, coming to understand one another, and knowing that life is really worth living.

Obama knows that unity is the only way forward to change. But he wants unity without struggle against capitalism. He wants to unite us under the banner of the nation-state. We want a unity of the coming together of many nations--queer nations, black, brown, indigenous, youth, etc nations--against the united states. Obama quoted in his speech the motto of the united states: e pluribis unum--out of many, one. Let us reject this attempt to regroup us once again under the banner of states and corporations. Out of many, many I say. Many chiapas, many selmas, many caracas, many porto alegres, many zapatistas, cimarrones, xigonas, sodomistas!

Long live the many-headed hydra!
Long live La Otra America!

Obama's CNN Interview

Here's the link to the interview I was commenting on in the previous post.