Category: Articles

In early November, an act of transphobic violence in Oakland set off a chain of public outcry, solidarity, and criminal prosecution. The victim, an 18-year-old high school student, was discharged from the hospital at the end of November, while their attacker has been charged with multiple felony counts and faces a long prison term if convicted. Now that the dust has settled, it’s time to think about the role not just of gender, but of race and the prison-industrial complex, as well as alternative responses to community violence.

On November 4th, Sasha Fleischman was sleeping on the AC Transit bus when Richard Thomas, a 16-year-old Oakland High School student, allegedly set their skirt on fire. Sasha, who identifies outside the gender binary and uses plural pronouns (they, them, their), spent most of November in the hospital, undergoing extensive skin grafts, and has a long recovery period ahead; an online fundraising page has already raised over $31,000 to help cover the costs.

For better and for worse, Sasha’s story has attracted some attention outside the Bay Area–even internationally. For better, because it’s important that people realize shit like this happens even in “progressive” enclaves like Oakland, and because people across the world (more than 700 of them so far) have shown support for Sasha on their fundraising page in the form of donations and kind comments. Sasha’s story has brought attention–some of it positive–to the experiences and struggles of folks who live outside the gender binary.

For worse, media coverage has been predictably abysmal. Most outlets have used the wrong pronouns for Sasha, repeated their legal name while casting their chosen name or pronoun in quotation marks, or referred to them as a “skirt-wearing teen,” as if their attire were the problem. Some reporters have just been lazy and obstinate, identifying Sasha as a gender, quoting their friends as saying Sasha uses plural pronouns–and then continuing to use male pronouns in the very next sentence. NBC Bay Area even went as far as to describe the pronoun they as “a purposely confusing word to show others what it feels like to be confused by gender,” casting all folks who use plural pronouns as conspiring to confound the cisgender public.

Even more frustratingly, the coverage doesn’t seem to be reaching those who need to know most: other high school students. I work as a sexual health counselor at a school not far from Sasha’s. I’m queer and out at work, and I often get to talk with queer, trans, and gender-variant students about their experiences, their challenges, and their relationships in this heteronormative, gender-enforcing world. Some students at the school know Sasha, or know Sasha’s friends, and I worry about how stories like Sasha’s affect their sense of safety in the community, on campus, and even at home.

But most students seem not to have heard about Sasha. When some of my queer coworkers and I teamed up with the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) last week to commemorate the national Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR), an annual memorial for trans and gender-variant folks who have been lost over the past year (many of them murdered), few students stopped at our table, where Sasha’s picture was displayed prominently along with the names and photos of others who have been attacked or killed. Most staff and faculty passed by in silence, too.

Fortunately, those who did stop by long enough to see Sasha’s portrait and hear their story expressed sorrow and regret at what happened to Sasha. Some of them even signed the GSA’s trans ally pledge or wrote Sasha a “Get Well” card. For this lunch period at least, the mood was one of support, solidarity, and healing for Sasha. Joining them in solidarity were Sasha’s classmates, teachers, parents, and friends, who had worn skirts to school and marched through East Oakland a week previously.

Outside the schools, however, the response has been different: an all-too-familiar combination of vilifcation and state power. The suspect, who is black, has been charged with two felonies, aggravated mayhem and assault, each with multiple hate crime enhancements, because Richard allegedly admitted he is “homophobic.” The District Attorney, Nancy O’Malley, has decided to charge him as an adult, despite a public plea from Sasha and their family to try Richard as a juvenile in family court. If convicted of both, he could face 25 years to life in prison. This is the dark elephant in the room of Sasha’s story: a “progressive” community’s willingness to throw away another black sixteen year old’s life.

The media coverage on the Left has been complicit in this project, despite its good intentions. Documentarian Jason Cohen, for example, writing for the Huffington Post’s Gay Voices column, compares the attack on Sasha to that of a gay teenager, Matthew Boger, who was beaten by neo-Nazis in Hollywood in 1980 (How Hate Happens). Cohen tells us how one of Boger’s attackers, Tim Zaal, who was 17 at the time, later realized the harm he’d caused and went on to join Boger in giving presentations on tolerance, “embark[ing] on a difficult journey of reconciliation and forgiveness.” For Cohen, Zaal’s story shows how hate is learned, and can be unlearned, and encourages us to think about the “deep-rooted factors” that could have led Richard to set Sasha on fire, such as, Cohen speculates, the lack of LGBT adults in Richard’s life. And yet Cohen mentions the numerous charges against Richard without for even a moment questioning his presumably lengthy incarceration.

The coverage on the Left, then, seems to recite the DA’s proclamations about the horrific nature of the crime–and it was horrific indeed–but predictably fails to question the prison-industrial complex’s (PIC) role as protector and its monopoly on the allocation of “justice.” It fails to critique, in other words, how the effort to drum up public awareness and outrage about the attack coincides with the state violence of locking up another black teenager, at a time, according to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, when black youth are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white youth charged with the same crimes (And Justice for Some). At a time when, as litigator Michelle Alexander writes, more African-Americans are incarcerated than were enslaved before the Civil War (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness). Yes, queer, trans, and gender-variant folks ought to be cautiously optimistic that the police and the community are taking gender-based violence seriously, rather than ignoring it, trivializing it, or blaming the victim. But this shouldn’t make us think that the cops are on our side (or that if they were, our work would be done) or prevent us from thinking critically about systemic racism. Such a complacent narrative will never explain, much less hold anyone accountable for, the death of Kayla Moore, a black transwoman who died while in Berkeley Police custody last February.

This narrative also shouldn’t prevent us from proposing radical alternatives to hate crimes laws and mass incarceration. Faced with this terrible act of violence, we ought to think restoratively. This means that we question the standard American criminal justice process, which Oakland-based restorative justice activist Fania Davis describes in Tikkun magazine as “retributive”:

“The only way to pay back the debt and re-balance the scales is to be given your just deserts…Pain, suffering, isolation, deprivation, even death are often viewed as the only way to make right the wrong, the only way to pay back the debt and the only way to re-balance the scales…Instead of the person harmed who retaliates, it is our justice system that strikes back on the victim’s behalf (What’s Love Got to Do with It?).

The retributive way of administering “justice” is so deeply engrained in American culture that even those like Jason Cohen, who want “reconciliation and forgiveness” for Richard and Sasha, cannot question it. Falling into the same trap, the editorial board of the SF Examiner declares that “we all need to focus on healing and learning,” while maintaining that “there is no doubt that there needs to be punishment for the sixteen year-old [Richard]” (Sasha Fleicshman Sets Example). Like Cohen, another way does not occur to them. But another way is possible: restorative justice holds that locking people in cages only increases the original wrong. Rather than focus on allocating individual blame and punishment, restorative justice seeks to repair harms for the victim, offender, and community alike, reconciling conflict instead of deepening it. It allows us to see how transphobic violence in the community and state violence behind bars share a common nexus. Restorative justice asks:

1) Who was harmed?
2)
3) What are the needs and responsibilities of all affected?
4)
5) How do all affected parties together address needs and repair harms?
6)
With these guiding questions, restorative justice programs attempt to bring together victims, offenders, and volunteers from the affected community to find fair, non-Statist, mutually acceptable ways of repairing the harm. This can take many forms: victim-offender mediation, family group conferences, or peacemaking circles (What’s Love Got to Do with It?). In West Oakland middle schools, restorative justice programs have been hugely successful: in 2007, an initiative started by Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth eliminated expulsions and fights, and reduced suspension rates by 75%, enormous achievements that retributive justice could never have reached. The model has proven effective outside the schools as well, from juvenile sexual assault cases to robberies.

The tragic irony here is that the same queer/trans folks who are tacitly, if not enthusiastically, supporting the use of hate crimes laws in the name of justice for Sasha, have they themselves so often been the target of this same legislation, often for just trying to defend against repression. The fact that hate crimes laws disproptionately affect queers, trans/gender-variant folks, low-income folks, people of color, and especially those who inhabit many of these identities, has been so well documented that even liberal left groups like the ACLU now oppose hate crime sentencing enhancements.* And yet, instead of seeing common cause with Richard, those who reflexively seek retributive justice for Richard threaten to pit queers against people of color, letting the state play the role of mediator. Fortunately, the community has resisted this cynical move, and students of color at Richard’s school and beyond have written letters of condolence and support to Sasha.

By all means, yes, let’s call Sasha’s attack the tragic act of violence that it was, and hold Richard accountable. We can be angry and scared and sad about what happened–these are all valid feelings, and I’ve been feeling them, too. But let’s hold ourselves accountable as well, and in doing so, attempt to hold the state accountable too. Let’s not confront one axis of oppression only to join with the state in reinforcing another one. Transphobic violence and ubiquitous, racist incarceration are both problems, and a 25-year sentence for Richard does nothing to solve the former while exacerbating the latter. A restorative approach challenges the state’s monopoly on “justice,” while offering an opportunity for mutual understanding and healing for Sasha and Richard.

* Abolitionist group Black and Pink has compiled radical queer critiques of hate crimes laws into a succinct document that you can view on their website: blackandpink.org

I am half–Canadian and half–American. I grew up mostly in Canada and thus have always had public–run health care in my life. I knew nothing about health insurance companies and all of their fine–print and evil until recently. Since coming to the US, I have not yet come into close contact with the American system since I have been mostly healthy aside from a baseball–related injury here and there.

However, my mother, who is my Canadian half, has had much more difficulty in recent years. This August she found out she has breast cancer for the third time and will be required to go through chemotherapy (something she is enduring right now with amazing resiliency), a double–mastectomy, and then radiation. As this process has advanced, she has found a few deficiencies of the Canadian system: certain medications are not 100% covered in Canada (although alternatives are), and she has been frustrated on occasion with some of the specialists who got caught up in surgery and could not attend to her right away. However, the bottom line is this: with all the other shit she has to deal with surrounding hospitals, and doctors and treatment and feeling good about herself, she has never once had to worry if she would be covered or if she would get a big bill at the end of it. In early 2014, when she is done with all of this, the total direct cost for having withstood all of this will be $0.

That is an amazing thing. Myself, on the other hand, living in the States now and not having a “real” job with a good income nor an employer than can supply me with health care, well . . . my plan is simply not to get sick. Even with the much–discussed Obamacare plan, I personally still have no other option.

Since January 1st, 2014, millions of people in the United States have had access to health care that they previously thought impossible. Nearly forty million people who previously did not have care, can get it. Many on the Right believe that this new health–care plan, colloquially known as Obamacare, is the death knell of private enterprise as it pertains to health. On the Left, the reaction has ranged from praise for the Democrats for getting something done, to outrage that the new plan has no publicly funded option and is still dominated by the insurance industry. This partisanship over an issue as seemingly basic as health is perhaps more striking than discussing the details of the plan itself. I thought the best way to tackle the issue would be to go back to the history of the US health–care system and then to briefly compare it to the system of our neighbors to the north in Canada.

What became alarmingly clear when reading into the past was that the health of the American people has always been the plaything of the rich and powerful. No matter the era, health care policy has always been more about garnering votes and placating the masses than it has been about a genuine concern for having a healthy population in the US.

the early days (pre–1920)

It would be safe to say that in the early part of the twentieth century the United States was already lagging well behind its European counterparts in healthcare accessibility. Until the 1920s there was no organized coverage afforded to American citizens. Unsurprisingly, the first calls for coverage came not from governmental circles, but rather from the labor movement, which was gaining great strength in this period.

By contrast, male German workers were partially covered in 1883; Swedish workers in 1891; Danish in 1892; and the Austro–Hungarian Empire, Norway, Switzerland, Britain, Russia and the Netherlands followed suit in 1912. Ironically, almost all of these initiatives were enacted not from leftist governments, but rather by conservative administrations fearing the rise of the working person and potential revolution. This pattern was followed in the US, albeit at a much slower pace.

In 1906, the American Association of Labor Legislation (AALL) proposed a solution which would cover local workers in much the same way that plans had elsewhere (any male making under $1200 per year would be eligible). It took nine years, but in 1915 the bill was finally introduced into congress. It was crushed, and was never really seriously considered as an option by any of the major parties who retained seats. The core reason for the bill’s defeat is one that is still well–understood today: red–baiting. Much of the debate in the house during that year centered not on health but rather on “Bolshevism” and the concern that giving people publicly funded health care would inevitably lead to a communist takeover. In addition, the bill–writers made a grave error by including the concept of death insurance in the act, thus taking on not only apathetic politicians, but also the already–massive and powerful insurance industry. Health insurance did not exist at that time per se, but life insurance certainly did, and those corporations were not ready to give up their stranglehold on the industry.

One interesting note during this period is that this would be the first (and last) era where the American Medical Association (AMA) actually supported health care reform; from this moment forward doctors would be at the forefront of the anti–public health care crusade, concerning themselves more with their wallets than anything else.

the labor rights era (1920–40)

Health care coverage began in the 1920s in perhaps the last place you would expect it today: Dallas, Texas. It was there that Baylor University Hospital (later taking on the more famous moniker of Blue Cross) first conceived the idea of providing health coverage. However, the insurance was not initially intended to benefit the poor nor the sick, but rather was devised as a way for doctors to have limited liability should anything go wrong. Local teachers were given coverage for the low monthly fee of 50 cents per month, but it covered so little that there was little risk for the hospital. Doctors were then able to use the extra money as a pool against any future “mistakes.”

Nonetheless, people liked the idea of feeling protected even if the plans were full of holes (for instance, baby care was covered but not coverage for pregnant women), so by 1938 about 3 million people were insured by Blue Cross. It should be made clear that the coverage was not available to the general population, but was rather offered piecemeal to certain organizations (professional groups, clubs etc.) who were deemed “respectable” enough to be offered the plan. Doctors were now firmly entrenched in their position, having basically created a system designed to further enrich them at the expense of their clients.

the civil rights movement (1940–1970)

The first major shift in health policy occurred during World War II, as a labor shortage forced US companies to re–analyze their relationship with employees. Just as the women’s rights movement grew from labor shortages caused by massive amounts of men being shipped off to fight a foreign war, changing American demographics affected corporation–employee relationships. Many companies, hoping to lure potential employees away from competitors, offered corporation–paid health care for the first time from 1941–5. However, further paralleling women’s labor participation during these years, plans were eliminated at the end of the war just as women were fired en masse in 1945.

Initially these plans actually benefitted the workers a great deal as access was equal (despite still being run by profit–driven private businesses). However, many loopholes were quickly closed with the introduction of the premium system, which allowed the insurers to charge more or less based on age, gender, and previously existing health problems. Soon, it was only cheap for young, healthy, white men to get coverage. Everyone else was left with escalating premiums.

In the midst of all this, in 1943, a bill for true public health care was introduced for the first time. Known as the Wagner–Murray–Dingell Bill, it was debated for a short time and soundly defeated as the AALL Bill had been before it. This time, lack of funds was cited as the main reason for its downfall.

In the 60s and 70s, as poor and minority communities were increasingly seen as a source of votes, both parties shifted towards offering limited health care plans. This resulted in a system that offered government credits to companies that provided health care. However, the health insurance racket was simply too big at this point for any mainstream elected official to oppose it without risking their political future. As usual, the Congressional wranglings of the day did not represent popular sentiment: a poll in 1964 showed that 60% of Americans favored a full public system . . . a number that has held steady or increased over the past fifty years. Of course, none of this mattered. After all, when was the last time there was a referendum in the United States?

In 1965, the modern (this term should be used very loosely) US health care system was founded with the formation of both Medicare and Medicaid. The former was designed to provide coverage for US citizens over the age of 65, while the latter was created to help subsidize coverage for those with low income and resources. This was done with a mostly–privately controlled system in mind — not coincidentally because the insurance companies themselves were often writing the revisions.

the modern era (1970–present)

The major shift in health care over the last forty years or so has nothing to do with the coverage itself, but rather with the expansion of the corporate–health alliance into new areas. Today, not only are doctors’ associations and insurance companies spending millions to oppose real public coverage, but technological and pharmaceutical companies have been added to the mix. These various lobby groups literally derive ALL of their income from people’s ill–health. Any health system run by people who want people to be sick, hmm . . . that’s like running a prison system that wants lots of criminals.

Any small gains made during the 60s were virtually eliminated by the Nixon–Reagan–Bush–Clinton–Bush administrations of the coming years as, once again, federally funded health care was aligned with such shiver–inducing words as “Communism,” “Socialism,” and “anti–Americanism.” People who could not afford coverage were simply left by the wayside. (In 2013, that amounted to 46,000,000+ people or about 16% of the entire “legal” population.) The end–result is that the US now leads the so–called developed world in preventable deaths. What people may not realize is that this system is also ridiculously expensive for taxpayers even as it gives most of that federal money to corporations rather than actual human beings.

is obamacare different?

In a word, no (with some caveats). Essentially, the new system is an extension of all the schemes that came before it: it is based in classism, wholly supports the insurance industry, sees doctors as entrepreneurs rather than as public servants, and will not dramatically change things going forward. It is indeed a major accomplishment that millions of people now have access to health care and that people with pre–existing conditions can no longer be denied care. However, Medicare is still not a true public option, as it is still firmly entrenched in the private system. The other major alteration is the creation of the exchange system. This will allow all Americans to go to government–run exchanges where they can get an even–handed picture of which private company will provide the best services for their needs. So far, this system has shown to be woefully inadequate and too complicated for most people. Obamacare’s other glaring flaw, a uniquely American problem, is that states can choose to opt–out of the plan. Fortunately, a federal exchange system can replace the state–run facilities in this case much to the dismay of States’ rights advocates across the country. This has meant that many aspects of the plan have only been approved in Democrat–run states, while the Republican–run states have attempted to opt out. Whether or not this has affected coverage opportunities, it has had the sad result of making health, once again, a partisan issue. Now, as always, party politics and the wealthy decide health–care policy, and the people are left out in the cold.

Bibliography

1. Bauman, Harold, “Verging on National Health Insurance since 1910” in Changing to National Health Care: Ethical and Policy Issues (Vol. 4, Ethics in a Changing World) edited by Heufner, Robert P. and Margaret # P. Battin, University of Utah Press, 1992.

2. Navarro, Vicente. “Why Some Countries Have National Health Insurance, Others Have National Health Service, and the United States has Neither”, International Journal of Health Services, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 383–404, 1989.

3. Reid, T.R. The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.

4. Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The rise of a sovereign profession and the making of a vast industry. Basic Books, 1982.

5. Staysmartstayhealthy.com’s Health Care History in the US.

6. Wikipedia’s “Provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”

7. Kboo.fm’s “Obamacare from ar adical universal healthcare perspective.”

8. Dailykos.com’s “Equip yourself to deflect Obamacare attacks,” August 29th, 2013.

9. Billmoyers.com’s “The rights Obamacare rhetoric is completely unhinged from reality,” October 13th, 2013.

10. Wikipedia’s “Comparison of the health care systems in Canada and the United States.”

11. http://hnn.us/article/146911

12. i2.cdn.turner.com’s May 28th, 2013 Health Care Poll.

13. Economix.blogs.nytimes.com’s “How much do doctors in other countries make.”

canada and the us (all stats 2010–13)

the US Canada

money spent per person on health $6714 $3678

% of health care that is run by the gov’t 46% 71%

% of seniors’ health care run by gov’t 53% 97%

number of uninsured citizens as a percentage 16.4% 0%

average doctor salary, in ‘purchasing power parities’ $230,000 $161,000

% of citizens with access to health care at work 59.1% N/A

% of personal bankruptcies relating to health care 49% 0%

money spent on drugs per capita per year 728 $509

World Health Organization Ranking (191 countries) 72nd 35th

The climate is changing before our eyes. In Berkeley, we’ve only had 5 inches of rain in a year and the weather is nothing like it was just 25 years ago when I moved here. And everywhere else, we’re seeing extreme weather events — burning heat, bitter cold, and violent storms. Although everyone notices and almost everyone realizes these changes are related to human CO2 emissions, we continue with business as usual. Climate chaos risks a mass extinction, crop failure, starvation, and social collapse, yet there is no sense of a popular uprising or outpouring of resistance like we briefly experienced during Occupy.

Rather, we’ve fallen into a psychological rut in which many people seem to have given up on the idea that our species will survive or can solve such an overwhelming problem. We’re left with hip cynicism that fetishizes the Apocalypse, or, more commonly, resignation and denial. The problem isn’t a lack of proposals, but rather that cutting emissions on a global scale is such a big project that any individual action appears meaningless. To eliminate CO2 emissions, everyone and everything has to change, but it’s hard to say what one can do right now to bring this about.

Sensitive people who can’t stop caring are gradually going mad from the contradictions — driven to hopeless isolated acts of vandalism or retreating into the ineffectual self-centered survivalism of backyard gardening or going back to the land. But none of these acts does anything to effectively attack the actual problem: that a tiny number of powerful people are running everything to concentrate wealth; that in the process, they have destabilized the ecosystems on which we all depend for our very survival; and that checks on their power by civil society are lacking.

The invisible hand of the market, left to its own devices and in control of the world’s governments, will not reduce reliance on fossil fuels since the market on its own doesn’t build in the costs of fossil fuel dependence. While some climate change is already inevitable, an inspired widespread movement can still make a difference and avert the most disastrous climate disruption and human social collapse.

It’s time to shake off this bad dream and say fuck this shit — let’s DO something. When I look at my daughter’s face and think about her future, I realize that life is too enjoyable and the world we inherited too beautiful to let it go down the drain so some oil companies can make a short-term buck.

We need to culturally and psychologically re-frame the way people think about climate change so we can get beyond being overwhelmed and instead focus on what we can do. It’s impossible to be sure that anything we can do at this point will make a difference, but it is certain that if no one does something dramatic soon, we’re screwed.

Just knowing the disturbing facts laid out in the Al Gore movie hasn’t been enough — and in fact seems to have backfired. Rather than building momentum for people to make personal and systemic changes in the way we relate to the earth, widespread awareness of climate change has enhanced fatalism and resignation.

Our experience with Occupy offers a peek at how to proceed. As with global warming, Occupy tackled economic issues so overwhelming and complex that people had tuned out. Until we figured out how to (briefly) tune back in. What we need now is a revival and expansion of the energy behind Occupy directed at the economy and the ecology.

Building a popular uprising depends on breaking down psychological isolation and building community. Resistance has to flow from our hearts and be inspired by our humanity, excitement, engagement and direct participation. As we build a movement, we will build momentum, fearlessness, and the psychological resources necessary to overcome the way things are, and instead see the way things can be.

A successful movement addressing climate change must attack inequality and capitalism because a system organized by valueless competition and economic efficiency can’t preserve the environment which is owned by no one and operates on its own separate internal logic. Capitalism necessarily seeks to maximize the human transformation and domination of nature — processing trees, rivers and the air we breathe to enlarge the bank balances of the oligarchs on top.

Up until recently, the struggle against capitalism has mostly been about justice and fairness for the humans it enslaves, but now it must be about our survival as a species and defense of the Earth on which we depend. If the global environment collapses, the poor and those in the Global South will suffer first and worst since whatever food and water remains will be seized by those with the most money and power in even more extreme ways than what already happens.

Bill McKibben quotes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as calculating that humans can emit a total of 565 gigatons more CO2 without going above a 2 degree C increase in global temperatures — an increase that might be manageable. For a sense of scale, humans emitted about 32 gigatons in 2012. Unfortunately, the London-based Carbon Tracker Initiative calculated that the fossil fuel companies already have coal, oil and gas reserves that would emit 2,795 gigatons of CO2 if burned. That means 80 percent of the fossil fuels that corporations have already discovered must not be burned. And yet the fastest growing part of the economy is environmentally destructive exploration and development of even more fossil fuels — Increasingly focused on difficult-to-extract “un-conventional” sources like tar sands.

All of the hype about fracking leading to American “energy independence” is very literally crazy talk — drilling and mining our own graves. We have to avoid confusion about fracking, XL pipelines, tar sands, trains carrying oil and coal, and other big fossil fuel projects. They aren’t bad primarily because they may pollute local water sources or risk spills, but because if the gas and oil they bring to market are burned exactly as intended — to run our clothes dryers and propel our cars and airplanes — our asses will be cooked. A lot of anti-fracking and pipeline campaigns are taking on a not-in-my-backyard flavor — passing laws to keep impacts away from populated areas — but this misses the point and further confuses and diverts energy we need to build a successful movement to avoid climate chaos.

The first step towards achieving zero greenhouse gas emissions needs to be an end to new investments in fossil fuel infrastructure, and a shift of the hundreds of billions of dollars annually spent to alternatives like solar, wind and conservation. At the beginning of WWII, the US rapidly converted its economy to war production, and quickly developed numerous new technologies for the war effort, most notably the atomic bomb. An uprising to stop climate change by achieving zero emissions needs to harness similar grassroots energy and creativity for positive goals, including in particular learning how to use less of everything.

Struggle outside and against the institutional structures is essential. There is no way to know precisely what will capture the hearts and imaginations of the billions of people who must together create this massive transformation. Given this, the key is for many people and groups to consistently test out different efforts, angles and ideas. Only through experimentation and diversity may we stumble on a way to break through the psychic paralysis that is gripping us.

During the summer of 2011, there was no reason to expect that Ad Busters’ call to “Occupy Wall Street” would catch fire the way it ultimately did, when so many previous calls to action were ignored. History is full of such moments when particular people, events or actions succeeded at triggering change when previous efforts had been in vain. As Nelson Mandela observed, “it always seems impossible until it’s done.”

As we focus on sparking and participating in a global uprising able to overturn the fossil fuel Goliath, are our personal actions irrelevant? Personal acts are not enough because they don’t attack the economic systems that drive climate change, but they aren’t irrelevant or pointless either. The world is the way it is because of webs of choices that everyone makes — powerful people as well as less powerful people. The market and economic structures restrict our individual choices and put many decisions in few hands. But at some level, the system supplies a fossil fuel-dependent world because people demand one. Fossil fuels enable a particular type of instant, throw-away existence and in turn socialize individuals who desire such a life.

Economic and political transformation has to come with a parallel cultural transformation in which the individual lives we desire shift from being about things to being about engagement; from consumption to community; and from living large to living lightly. Our daily choices to feel more happiness while using fewer resources are another form of experimentation and practice for such a cultural re-orientation.

These choices aren’t about guilt — either directed at ourselves or others — but rather they express our humanity. We can feel more alive to the extent we’re self-reliant, present, and active. The fossil fuel age has accompanied an insidious psychological slide towards distraction and meaninglessness as we’ve tried to replace every human skill and interaction with technology — begging the question of whether the world we’ve created even needs us, other than as passive consumers. Living more lightly on the Earth — transforming nature less and participating as a part of nature more — is about more than just averting climate catastrophe. In the end, the transformation we seek is about reclaiming what is really important about our lives from corporations and their mediated, fossil fuel-dependent cages.

Slingshot is an independent radical newspaper published in Berkeley since 1988.

People often claim that the Bay Area exists in a bubble. This is a little unfair when considering the United States behaves as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Many maps even erroneously depict the land as an island. Many aspects of the Bay actually take into account dynamic world issues and how to make impactful changes locally. A gradual change has been making a peaceful transition of the Bay intolerable. The war being waged on poor people is most noticeably in San Francisco — but spreading into Oakland and Berkeley as well. A population preoccupied with material wealth is unlikely to get involved in grassroots social justice organizing.

Our offices here in Berkeley recently received complaints from neighbors of noise performance artists. This compelled the city to require us to get a business license after operating the Info Shop for 25 years, and another 15 as the Long Haul before that. Prior to 2014, we were zoned as a massage parlor.

It is in spaces operating off of main street outside of permits that our organization flourished in as well as countless other spaces nationally and internationally. Info shops, squats, street parties have broken free from the demands of money and government to provide direct experience and action.

When compared with the affluence and pressures of the business world it appears as “A town of fucking fantasy”. The idea with this style of rabid and organic journalism is to make being conscientious rewarding.

Every issue the painful topics of the world gets ingested by collective members. Sometimes trying to solve them or other issues of working on a paper the pain gets directed inward. Internal strife plagues every project and often seems an antidote to reaching a goal. A cool quote surfaced around while the fray of hurt feelings and bitterness of this issue was being practiced, “Tyrants don’t mind if you hate them– Just as long as you don’t love each other.” It is one thing to forget to go after the people and organizations actively killing people and nature by giving energy to so much drama. But to forget to marvel and appreciate the people in our lives is a failed opportunity. Have patience with your allies..

The mistakes people make are often the strongest teachers they have in making a new world.

This time of year we have quite a few organizers lying around that we could use help in finding people who want them. If there is events you want to table for, a cool bookstore that doesn’t have it or even if you know a homeless youth organization that we should donate copies to let us know.

Slingshot is always looking for new writers, artists, editors, photographers, translators, distributors, etc. to make this paper. If you send something written, please be open to editing.

Editorial decisions are made by the Slingshot Collective but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collectives members. We welcome debate and constructive criticism.

Thanks to the people who made this:, Aaron, Eggplant, Emily, Enola, Finn, Glenn, Jesse, Joey, J–tron, Judy, Soren, Stephski, Terri, Vanessa, Zander and all the authors and artists.

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting

Volunteers interested in getting involved with Slingshot can come to the new volunteer meeting on February 23 at 4 pm at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below.)

Article Deadline & Next Issue Date

Submit your articles for issue 116 on March 29 2014 at 3 p.m.

Volume 1, Number 115, Circulation 20,000
Printed

Slingshot Newspaper
A publication of Long Haul

Office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue

Mailing: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

Phone (510) 540–0751 • slingshot@tao.ca slingshot.tao.ca • fucking twitter @slingshotnews

Circulation Information

Subscriptions to Slingshot are free to prisoners, low income and anyone in the USA with a Slingshot Organizer, or $1 per issue or back issue. International $3 per issue. Outside the Bay Area we’ll mail you a free stack of copies if you give them out for free. Each envelope is one lb. (8 copies) —- let us know how many envelopes you want. In the Bay Area, pick up copies at Long Haul or Bound Together Books in SF.

Other Slingshot Free stuff

We’ll send you a random assortment of back issues of Slingshot for the cost of postage: Send $3 for 2 lbs. Free if you’re an infoshop or library. Also, our full–color coffee table book about People’s Park is free or by sliding scale donation: send $1 — $25 for a copy. We also have surplus copies of the 2012 Organizer available free to a good home. Email or call us: slingshot@tao.ca / Box 3051 Berkeley, 94703.

Right now if you Google “Slingshot Organizer” the first thing you get is a sponsored link to purchase the 2012 Slingshot Organizer from the Walmart website. A few weeks ago a link to this search result went viral on the internet and Slingshot got lots of emails from horrified people wondering why we would sell the organizer to Walmart.

Slingshot collective does not sell the Slingshot organizer to Walmart and there is no reason to think that anyone can walk into a brick–and–mortar Walmart and purchase a Slingshot organizer. We think the Walmart website lists the organizer for sale because their computer automatically lists every book that is available through the book distribution network on its website.

The experience of having numerous heartless corporate websites like Walmart, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and even Sears (!) list our volunteer–published radical organizer — without any of them asking us or our collective ever mailing any of them a copy — demonstrates how capitalism run on auto–pilot by computers works. The process of homogenization and alienation of products from the people and communities that produce them is powerful and disorientating.

We are certainly annoyed and embarrassed that these websites list the organizer, and we suspect that most of them would be annoyed and embarrassed too, if they knew about it, given the scandalous anti–corporate contents of the organizer. There were protests nationwide on Black Friday against the appallingly low wages and poor working conditions at Walmart and we’re pretty sure Walmart wouldn’t enjoy the organizer’s suggestions on occupying banks or resisting police repression.

Slingshot collective distributes most of the organizers we print directly to a network of infoshops, food co–ops, and small independent bookstores that we’ve built relationships with over the last 20 years. We also distribute about 20% of the organizers through the following small, independent distributors: AK Press, Buy Olympia, Small Changes, Microcosm, Pioneers Press, Vision Works, Last Gasp, Active Distro (London) and Kersplebedeb (Canada).

All of these distributors are collectives or small mom–and–pop operations that have long traditions in the alternative / counterculture scene. Some of these distributors have relationships with larger book distribution companies which is how we think the Slingshot ended up on the Walmart and other corporate websites. It is hard to know if making the organizer available to independent bookstores beyond our own network through distributors is worth the price of also making the organizer available to the big corporate players who are systematically destroying independent stores. Capitalism and dehumanizing high technology present countless lose–lose propositions like this — most of them a lot more oppressive and environmentally destructive than listing Slingshot on a website.

A few years ago, a Borders bookstore sent Slingshot collective an order for some Slingshot organizers. We decided at a meeting that we would refuse to fill orders from big business fucks — because we want to support independent bookstores and alternatives to the capitalist machine. While we have never sent organizers to any big corporate entity, it is hard to keep their computers from sweeping us up along with every other product out there.

We hope folks who use the organizer will ignore the corporate websites and get an organizer from a small collective near you. Doing so supports that collective as well as our collective.