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Yaressi Morin’s mother brought her here when she was 6 years old. She was a little girl already carrying a culture with her, but she was still young enough to fully embrace another. The United States became her home. When she was deported back to Mexico 14 years later, she crawled back across the desert, determined to return home. She died trying. She took her last breath in her cousin’s arms after suffocating in the heat.

This story glared upward at me while I waited for my food at Juan in a Million, a popular Mexican restaurant in east Austin. I became preoccupied with the Mexican newspaper recounting the tragedy and tried not to bleed my Gringa heart all over the table. It was late spring of 2012, and the idea of the DREAM Act had not yet been introduced.

Eventually, I looked up at my lover who had joined me for breakfast and asked him, “Why does this bullshit happen?”

“She didn’t have the papers.”

“But why won’t the government let her get the papers? She spent most of her fucking life here.” I felt indignant.

He shrugged. He came off as flippant, but I knew better. He himself is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, and probably didn’t feel like thinking about it. My stomach convulsed in guilt, thinking of all of the U.S. citizens like me enjoying Mexican food on that Saturday morning. The question of how many lives the government might be ruining in that second as countless Texans chewed on breakfast tacos stuck in my head like the knot of refried beans and tortilla that was about to be plastered to the roof of my mouth.

My “Don Juan” taco arrived. For a minute, I only stared down at it in shame. E’s eyes looked up from his huevos y la seccion de los deportes, curious.

I shake my head. “I’m sorry I’m acting weird. I have a lot on my mind.” My thoughts had simplified to only four words, actually, but they weighed heavily: this could be him.

As I ate, my mind flickered back to one of the times we visited Barton Springs. He joked that he couldn’t swim to deter me from dragging him into the frigid water. To an onlooker, he might have sounded convincing, yet I knew that he had pushed his way across a river to be here. He would jokingly call himself a wetback, and laugh when I cringed at the word. I later asked him if the river was much wider than the spot where we were swimming.

“Yes, and it was moving much faster.”

“Were you scared?”

“Yes.” It was another stupid question that I had to ask.

People stared as we lay out by the water. “We are a weird couple,” he had said once.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I see them looking.” So many white people I know claim that racism is no longer an issue, but segregation is still the norm. If it wasn’t, why would a white woman and a Mexican guy be such a spectacle?

These racial and cultural tensions are not lessened by the supposedly progressive Obama administration, which is cracking down harder on immigrants than ever. Their goal, in connection with privately owned detention centers, is to deport 400,000 immigrants each year. In order to meet this quota, they have expanded what defines “aggravated felonies,” or the charges that immediately render someone deportable. These aggravated felonies now include what would be considered a misdemeanor for a United States citizen, such as minor shoplifting. In the words of my friend who works amongst lawmakers in Texas, “They are hanging onto otherwise law-abiding fifty year-old churchgoing moms and dads these days.”

This is precisely why I felt as though a giant bucket of ice water had been dumped over my head when E’s brother contacted me in December with the news that the cops had picked E up on a DWI. Six months went by since we’d eaten in that restaurant and we were no longer together. Furthermore, our attempts to stay friends had gone about as well as trying to eat healthfully at Mcdonald’s, so we were not on speaking terms. All of the old feelings I’d imprisoned in some inaccessible area of my psyche came rushing back with a vengeance, and I collapsed beneath the weight of them, realizing I was still in love with him. I wanted to do anything I could to help. Two days later, I took the first possible opportunity to visit him. As I waited, my thoughts raced incessantly:

What will he say? Would he refuse to see me? Why would I even still care if I had any self-respect? Stop beating yourself up. You’re here, if he’s acts like an asshole, just don’t come again.

After 30 minutes, a guard emerged. “Video visitation: Martin-ez.” I winced at the Anglo-cized enunciation. He listed more inmates’ last names, then barked, “The rest of you…hang tight.” Another quarter of an hour passed before the guard returned and shouted only E’s last name. I stood up.

“He’s working right now, so he can’t do the visitation.”

“Right.” I said, pretending I’d almost expected it. But I wanted to scream, “Are you fucking kidding me!?”

Then he added, “You should be able to visit him in another hour and a half, I think….I hope.” Being on a break from school and work afforded me the privilege to wait around for him. Others are not so lucky.

I could barely contain myself as the guard herded us to a hallway with telephones and windows. I walked to the third window on the left where E sat beaming at me in black and white stripes. But as soon as I sat down, we both began to cry. Awkward small talk ensued as we wiped the liquid from our faces to make way for new tears.

Not being one to sit long with sadness, he smiled at me and changed the subject, proclaiming, “I want a taco.” I laughed. “The food is bad here,” he went on. Then, he asked hopefully, “Did you bring my dad with you?”

“No, Patito, I’m so sorry. He can’t come see you; it’s too dangerous. Do you have any family or friends that are citizens? I can help them to come see you.” He shook his head, confirming to me that I was the only person close with him who could see him. I wondered about all of the immigrants who did not have a token U.S citizen in their lives to make the trip. “How lonely, how inhumane!” I shouted in my head.

I was able to visit him a few more times, and with each visit the window between us became more tragically erotic. We clawed at that glass partition like sex-starved animals in heat. We mixed our fingerprints with those of others in previous visitations who simply longed to hold someone’s hand.

Being the child of addicts and a student of social work, I felt compelled to “fix it,” and easily must have called 15 or more lawyers and various organizations during the next few days. At the end of that I only received one returned message- a lawyer referred to me by a social work professor interested in immigrants’ rights. This lawyer was kind enough to visit E pro bono after visiting another one of her clients at the same institution. She called me afterward, informing me that she could not help him.

Still, I asked her, “If we are in such a dire economic crisis, what is the incentive of keeping detainees indefinitely? We are spending to feed, sustain, and deport these individuals. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Cheap labor in suffering, small town economies,” she responded. The pieces suddenly fit together. The privatized companies were making money off of locking up flesh in buildings, so that those in the fragile economy on the outside could benefit. Only $60 a day per inmate would be more than balanced out by creating jobs at these centers for the townsfolk, who could in turn spend their newly earned money. The hotels nearby benefitted from the visitors. I wanted to vomit.

“Slavery never ended!” I ranted at my father on the phone later on. “They are separating families of color. They offer them $3 an hour to work while they make a profit off of them. We’re all just letting it happen.”

“It’s not right, but he shouldn’t have been driving around like that when he shouldn’t even be here in the first place.” My dad’s attempt at reasoning through the injustice failed to console me. Though I don’t condone drinking and driving, E’s mistake did not help me further understand this agreed upon illusion called “borders.” “Preservation of national security” was being used to justify racism, xenophobia, and institutionalized slavery, or at least legalized trafficking. All in the name of good ole Amurika, where folk like them “don’t belong here,” while others I knew received community service hours and a fine for being significantly more intoxicated when they were pulled over than E. The scales on the dollar bill were collapsing, an elephant and a mouse joining together as see-saw partners. Somehow, I don’t think this is the dream Martin Luther King, Jr. had in mind.

The last time I visited E in the county prison, he was excited. “I’m leaving soon!”

“To the detention center?”

“Yes, I think.”

I tensed. Neither his brother nor I had managed yet to find him a lawyer. I chose not to tell him about the articles I’d read recounting the infamously awful conditions of Texas detention centers and the reports of sexual assaults.

Instead, I asked, “Do you know the date they are sending you? Did they tell you where? You could be sent very far away, which will make it harder for me to come visit you.”

He frowned. “No. Soon, though.” I was not surprised that demystifying the process was not ICE’s top priority.

Soon after, they moved him and I traveled 4 hours round trip to visit. Rather than clawing at the windows, we chose instead this time to draw human genitalia and profanities with our oily fingerprints on the glass. When we said goodbye, I cried, not knowing if this would be the last time I would see him.

On the eve of the submission deadline for this article, E called me with the last of cash he’d likely borrowed. “I am so bored,” he lamented. “I want to get out of here. Can you come visit me soon?”

“I’m going to try, Patito,” I said. “Your brother said he will send money soon.”

“I’m going to try to come back after they deport me, but maybe they won’t if I use this lawyer my brother just found.” The lawyer had sounded like a scam artist when I called him to follow up, and I trusted him about as far as I could throw him.

“But it isn’t safe…” Yaressi’s story reappeared before my eyes.

“No. I’ll be fine. It will be okay.”

I could hear him smiling, and reminisced about the first time I had ever seen his smile at the restaurant where we met. He was a busser, and I was a hostess. We catered to the rich people and politicians just down the street from the Texas State Capital. For a second, I remembered the way the Congressmen would ignore us as I led them to the tables, and he would smile at me as he rushed in to pour their water.

Editor’s Note:

I grew up in the so-called “Pacific Northwest,” and I’ve heard a lot of forgettable myths about future anti-authoritarian ecotopic societies. But for some reason, Cascadia and its mythos sticks around.

I’ve witnessed the Cascadian Separatist Movement grow from hushed tavern conversations in Seattle, to drunken proclamations on sailboats in Bellingham Bay, to protestors waving Cascadian flags during massive labor marches in Portland, Oregon. Numerous workers’ cooperatives have sprouted up inspired by the Cascadian Dream of removing bosses and the state, the dream of creating a meaningful relationship with one’s workplace and bioregion. Perhaps the incredible growth of this movement has something to do with the Cascadian flag.

Unlike so many radical visions these days, Cascadia is not merely a project of negation. Cascadians allow themselves to indulge in the symbolic things that have been ascribed to modern imperialism: flags, anthems, mottos, and maps. Some criticize this. But I’ve come to wonder: As activists, are we merely fighting the flags and symbols of capitalist imperialism? Or are we actually attempting to confront the mechanisms of oppression beneath the flags? Humans have united around symbols since long before the first capitalist bought the abstracted labor of a worker, and symbols will remain long after the last growth-oriented workplace is dismantled. Perhaps the Cascadians are on to something: they have stolen the symbolic language that gives power and legitimacy to empires, and applied it to a network of workers’ coops engaged in environmental stewardship. But Cascadia isn’t just about putting good ideas in fun packaging.

There is something magic about the dream of Cascadia, something sentimental–it evokes a sort of longing for an ideal future of the past (the blueprint for Cascadia was, after all, largely inspired by the bestselling 1975 science-fiction novel Ecotopia). And I’ll admit that sometimes, while walking under a water-laden sky, I find my imagination spilling onto the canvas of grey clouds, my mind suddenly alight with visions of a free Cascadia, and a global network of Bioregional Cooperative Commonwealths.

I stole the text of this article from a zine that’s been circulating for about 20 years called “FREE CASCADIA! WE ARE CASCADIAN.” I’ve revised parts to better reflect the scope of conversations I’ve had in with people who dare to dream and call themselves Cascadians. As we develop our theories and perfect our practices, I hope folks will continue to revise this manuscript.

-Samara of the Slingshot Collective

By Alexander Baretich
Cascadia is a region that extends west from the Rockies, following the flow of water all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Why not call it “the Pacific Northwest”? Because that is a geopolitical description based on an Atlantic-centered map. The “Pacific Northwest” is a nameless object at the distant corner of Atlantic empires, an object of second thought to the power centers in Washington DC & Ottawa. We have a name: We are Cascadians! And we have a home: It is called Cascadia! By giving ourselves and our home a name, we begin the process of empowering ourselves and restoring the land as a place of home and sacredness, and not a place for “resource extraction” for empire or greed. In Chinook Jargon, the name of our bioregion is Chinook Illahee. We honor and use both names of our home.

Bioregionalism is the consciousness or awareness of the interconnectedness of the water-life cycle within a given region. The great water-life cycles are actually the generation and transfer of energy. So each bioregion is a living system of interconnected communities and churning energy. In Tao philosophy, the flow of energy in bodies and systems is ascribed to chi (Qi) or often translated into English as “life force.” The water-life (within the great water-life cycles) is like the chi of the biomass of the Earth. It is a flow of energy and living beings that are dependent on those life cycles, and it is crucial that we sustain, maintain, and preserve those cycles in conscious, healthy ways. Within each bioregion, there are many ecoregions with unique habits and microclimates, but those ecoregions are all connected by a shared water-life cycle. The actions in one part of a bioregion have consequences downriver and upwind. As bioregionalists awakened to the importance of these cycles and their regional interconnectivity, the work of stewardship becomes part of who we are. The bioregion permeates the very soul of the awakened inhabitant, the bioregionalist. Hence a bioregionalist is one who advocates for the expansion of consciousness and the protection of the water-life cycle.

Some envision a future Cascadia as a social democracy akin to some of the northern European countries like Finland or Denmark. Others envision a representational democracy that could be called a Republic of Cascadia. But many of us are tired of Western models of nation-states. We envision a Cascadia that is radically counter to the nation-state and counter to the control of transnational corporations that have inflicted so much direct & structural violence around the world. Our vision is anti-capitalist, decolonialist, and the end of exploitation of all kinds. This new model is one of horizontal structures, cooperative relations (mutual aid), and resilient communities. It is a decentralized network that branches out like a nervous system throughout the bioregion. This new approach is called a Bioregional Cooperative Commonwealth (BCC).

A Bioregional Cooperative Commonwealth is not a centralized socialist system, but it takes ideas from socialism and turns them inside out & upside down. Instead of an overarching centralized management bureau redistributing wealth, controlling the means of production & the commons, a BCC would be locally and horizontally managed. It is a network, with local nodes of autonomy working together in mutual aid. The model of the BCC is inspired by two historically successful movements: the Mondragón Cooperative Federation in Spain, and the Swadeshi Movement in India.

The Mondragon Cooperatives arose in the Basque Country of Northern Spain in the late 1950s as a mode of economic resistance to Franco’s fascist regime. Mondragon started with a polytechnic school and paraffin heater making cooperative, and eventually grew into to a complex network of cooperative workplaces. By the end of 2011, the Mondragon Cooperative Federation included 83,869 people working in 256 companies. These companies are all owned and democratically managed by the workers. They manage the means of production themselves, without intervention by bosses or the state, and coops support each other in mutual aid. This is perhaps the world’s best functioning model of anarcho-syndicalism, an economic model which facilitates the formation of a non-authoritarian society.

The Swadeshi Movement in India arose in the early 1900s as a strategy to dismantle the colonial rule of the British Empire. Following the principals of swadeshi (Sanskrit for “self-reliance” or “autonomy”), folks boycotted British products and revived domestic production. This was a Localization Movement that was carefully aimed at undermining imperialist power structures, and it was a key strategy of Mahatma Gandhi, who described Swadeshi as the soul of Swaraj (self-rule). Gandhi’s economic model is central as we restructure our workplaces to build a Bioregional Cooperative Commonwealth.

Gandhian economics diverge from both Smith (capitalism) and Marx (communism) because those models operate through a system of ownership. Gandhian economics promotes a social structure based on trusteeship. In ownership-based systems, one can legally use, misuse, abuse, and even destroy what is owned. (In capitalism, this is done by individuals. In communism, it is done by the state.) In a trusteeship-based system, the trustee cannot misuse or destroy property because there is no property; there are only resources that have been temporarily entrusted to individuals and groups. This reflects reality. We live temporary lives within a deeply interconnected biosphere. The lie of private property conceals this reality, and enables destructive ownership-based systems to direct people away from their own happiness in a destructive race for temporary gain.

As humans, we are entrusted with an incredible amount of power over our bioregion. Those who cannot speak for themselves–future generations of humans, as well as non-human people (called “animals” by those who exploit them), depend on us to make responsible choices. Our choices deeply affect all living things, particularly those within our bioregion.

Our home is of continuous cascading water, and as trustees of this water-life cycle, our highest incentive is stewardship, autonomy, and the process of building meaningful lives. The matter in our bodies is on loan to us, and will soon return to the biosphere.

The lone-standing Douglas-fir on the Cascadian flag symbolizes endurance, defiance, and resilience against the forces of imperialism.

The Nine Dieta of Cascadia:

For Ecology, Equality & Equity

With Respect, Reverence & Responsibility

In all Commons, Communities & Cooperatives

“I was trying to grow food in my yard. The ivy and blackberry from the neighboring abandoned apartment building were coming over under and through the fence and up through the ground, making it impossible to clear the ground for beds. The building hadn’t always been empty. Maybe since the start of the housing crisis, another Oakland foreclosure. As it turned out, Bank of America, (who also owns my house) was the new owner and they were proving to be poor property owners as well as neighbors. As property owner, they were refusing to refinance my house to lower my payment and make it affordable, preferring instead to disqualify me for the loan and push me to foreclosure. As neighbors, their lack of maintenance was spilling across property lines and creating a major nuisance and expense.

“Can you blame them? Bank of America has some of the highest foreclosure ratings in the nation, that amounts to a lot of properties. A land grab of such proportions provided unique challenges for land maintenance and management. Well, a land grab could go both ways. I realized I would not be able to grow food until the other yard was cleared. In fact, I wanted to grow food on the other yard as well. I took down the fence and started hacking. And thinking, ‘Why is this building empty when people need housing? Why shouldn’t we take what we need? Why am I working alone?’ It was a big job and led to big thoughts. I needed help. People needed housing. I went to Oscar Grant Plaza and announced the vacancy.”

~our neighbor

It was in Oscar Grant Plaza, site of the Occupy Oakland encampment in late November 2011 when a person told me about a foreclosed and abandoned apartment complex adjacent to her home. The next day I was cleaning out a unit, getting water, gas, and electric utilities turned on in my name, changing the locks, and beginning to move in. Less then a month later all the units in the complex were occupied. Because more than one of the new occupants had received a stay away order from Oscar Grant Plaza — meaning they had court orders against them and would be arrested for going near the plaza as a result of their political activity there — it didn’t take long before our home was being called the StayAway.

With the help of our neighbor, who resourced many green waste bins every week from other neighbors, we cleared the back yard of ivy and blackberries, terraced the little hill that remained and planted kale, collard, calendula, mint, sage, rosemary, fava, lettuce, tomato, carrot, potato, artichoke, sunflower, and even some ornamentals. We took it a step further. We started a few guerrilla gardens in abandoned, trash filled lots — changing them into community spaces intended to break our reliance on capitalism and replace it with solidarity and sustainability.

It would not be an exaggeration to say tens of thousands of meals were cooked in the kitchens of our occupied complex. We made connections with a Latin produce market in the nearby Fruitvale neighborhood, bike carting hundreds of pounds of edible but not sell-able produce home every week. Dumpsters in the slightly more affluent Diamond and Laurel neighborhoods provided huge amounts of food for those who would forage them. Food banks and food stamps filled the gaps. All this food would generally make its way to port and bank shutdowns, eviction defenses, Occupy Oakland BBQs, or to rallies and marches of all kinds.

It was a surprisingly long time, about 4 months, before any representative from the bank came knocking. When one finally showed up, he told us we were trespassing and would be arrested. I told him that we were not trespassing. He left and came back a little later that day with two Oakland police officers. The bank representative told the police I was trespassing. I informed them that I was a tenant and that I had no prior relationship with this so called ‘representative’ of the bank. One of the cops had arrested me in Oscar Grant Plaza a few months before, in the first raid. He repeatedly asked if our home was Occupy related, and other politically oriented questions. I continued to tell him those kinds of questions were irrelevant, and this issue was a civil matter that did not concern the police. They eventually left, telling the bank representative to file an unlawful detainer (legalese for eviction lawsuit).

About two months later each occupied unit was served with a “Notice to Quit”, which means leave or we will sue you. For an eviction in California you are allowed 90 days before the lawsuit comes. When it did, two units (the one where I live and another) filed a “response”, which says we contest the eviction and want to take it to trial. Meanwhile one unit didn’t file in time and received a default judgment, which means you didn’t answer so you lose the case by default. And soon after, that unit got a “10 day Notice to Vacate”, which means you have ten days before the sheriff comes to make sure you’re out, or arrest you if you refuse.

We organized an eviction defense. In general, we had a big sleepover, put up a bunch of banners, (STOP PAYING THE BANKS, WE WILL STAND WITH YOU, etc.), and did some light barricading (i.e. put a couch in the stairwell and extra locked the front gate). At 6am on eviction day there were over 40 people in the yard. We also put an info table out front with information on the foreclosure crisis, predatory lending, and other resources and groups doing work in housing justice (plus free coffee!). A locksmith and sheriffs passed by and loitered a bit but never confronted us in any way. It was a beautiful and empowering day. That unit was supposed to be evicted over three months ago, but people are up there now, laughing as I write this.

There was another, less positive, aspect to this action that bears mentioning. For a week after the eviction defense there were individuals, in addition to those who had signed up to take shifts at the info table and defending the space, who stayed. The upstairs unit changed from an organizing and living space to a 24-hour rager, with yelling and loud music at all hours. Many verbal and a few physical fights broke out. Requests for calm or quiet were outright ignored or were responded to with intimidation. It was so bad that it was hard to attribute it all to alcohol and nasty people. It was hard to not suspect state involvement, but who knows, only time will tell. In the end what happened was, while everyone was out at an OO BBQ (myself included), personal belongings were put outside and the unit was barricaded from the inside. It took a lot of courage to do that, and the one who did it has my eternal respect. I mention this because it could have been an ugly end to nearly a year of beautiful resistance. I think this could have been avoided had we used a vouching model for who we allow into the space, and by communicating clearer boundaries as to what is mutual aid and what is just hanging out.

It was nearly a year after I started living here when I found myself in front of a judge and jury, arguing for my right to stay. I had demanded the jury, which I felt would not only give us a better chance, but at least postpone the trial for a month and made the lawyers work overtime. They filed pretrial motions ‘in limine’ that barred my speech, evidence, behavior and attire along with everyone else in the court room. I will quote one of the more interesting motions in part:

“Such subjects and evidence that should be barred include, but are not limited to, the ‘banking crisis,’ the ‘foreclosure crisis,’ the ‘Occupy Movement,’ ‘Occupy Wall Street,’ ‘Occupy our homes,’ ‘predatory lending,’ or any other reference to the alleged unethical practice of banks and/or mortgage lenders.”

They supported all of these pretrial motions with a “statement of the facts”, in part:

“Defendant […] has apparently invited close to two dozen others who are similarly without right, title or interest to the Property. Defendant and his accomplices have not only refused to leave but they are apparently using the Property as something of a headquarters or rallying point for their protests against many groups, including financial institutions.” There is a hint of fear in that statement.

In the end, we lost. The scope of the trial was narrowed down to two questions for the jury to decide on. (1) Was the notice to quit served correctly? And, (2) Did defendant receive permission to occupy the property?

I may be able to appeal on technical grounds and, if I win, it could create more legal protections for squatters. I have been defending myself in court, pro per. Should I appeal it would only be with the participation of a radical pro bono lawyer. So email defendourhomes@gmail.com with any leads, to get involved, or to get our case # for your own research.

Most of us out there realize we will never own a home. Most will work their lives away to pay rent or bank loans till they die, a slave in a system whose debt they can never escape. Most will leave nothing to their children but debt and a dying planet. And that will never change by simply working with the state and the banks. If they have their way we will remain debt slaves forever. Our only hope lies in a community that organizes to defend their homes in a direct way; in a movement that defies the state and the banks; that refused to pay and refused to leave.

At the least, we can cause serious economic damage to the banks by fighting their foreclosures and evictions, thus taking back our power and forcing them to seriously rethink the way they encroach on us. But that is only an added bonus. Radical expropriation of land (squatting) is the rebirth of lands that are cared for and utilized, not owned and lorded over our heads to coerce us into slavery. Or as a friend of mine put it “i squat because i want to take an abandoned hole in the fabric of the universe and turn it into something autonomous and creative and
communal. And i squat because i appreciate the gift of life and don’t want to surrender my days to working for a boss and a landlord all the time. i squat because i like it….” We must stop paying and organize others to stop paying for this stolen land. It is something we can do now, not only to liberate ourselves, but to enact a different way of life that is a direct threat to this system of oppression.

The US PROStitutes Collective (US PROS), formed in 1981, is a multi-racial network of former and current sex workers working in different areas of the sex industry. We are part of the International Prostitutes Collective. Our starting point is women who work the streets who are most likely to get arrested and face violence.

We estimate that about 70% of sex workers are mothers, mostly single mothers, supporting kids and other family members. Most are driven into prostitution because of poverty and lack of financial alternatives. The poverty rate for single mother-headed households was triple the poverty rate for the rest of the population in 2011. Punitive welfare reform policies have thrown thousands of moms into destitution. When welfare is cut, more women are picked up for prostitution and more women end up in prison.

We work in the sex industry for a variety of reasons. One reason is that sex work pays better than many jobs on the market, such as working in the fast food industry or as a receptionist or cashier. Sex work also often allows for flexibility and control over our work schedule. Whether working the streets, as call girls, online, as strippers, making videos, etc, if we are mothers, we can fit sex work around our kids’ school schedules. Those of us who are students can set our hours around classes and studying. Many of us use sex work to top off the low wages of other jobs.

But sex work is illegal and we face arrest every time we go to work. The prostitution laws criminalize us and we are illegal workers with no rights. An arrest or a conviction for a prostitution-related offense can have devastating consequences. We can lose custody of our children, get kicked out of our homes, or be deported if we are immigrants. And once we have a criminal record, it is much harder to get out of prostitution and find another job. Criminalization also makes us vulnerable to rape and other violence, and fear of arrest prevents most sex workers from reporting violent crimes. Police themselves can be part of this violence. 20% of street workers and 14% of indoor workers have experienced violence at the hands of police and 16% of indoor workers had been involved in sexual situations with the police.

One of the women in our network, a young Black mother, was convicted of violating a “Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution Order.” Working with Legal Action for Women (LAW), a grassroots legal service, we contacted numerous agencies for help with affordable housing so the young woman could leave prostitution. Nothing was available. She was left with a choice between destitution and sex work. Either way she risked losing custody of her children. Tragically, this young woman was arrested again for pimping, after she helped another young woman to get off the street. US PROS intervened to stop her from being registered as a sex offender which would have had drastic and lifelong implications.

Under a new California law called the Case Act, this young woman could now be considered a “trafficker” and face 12 years in prison. The Case Act (Proposition 35) funded by ex-Facebook billionaire Chris Kelly, and supported by law enforcement, will further criminalize sex workers and anyone who we associate with. US PROS vigorously opposed the CASE Act and was joined by other sectors in the community such as people of color, church, gay, legal, civil rights groups, and many individuals. Despite claims by the people behind this law, victims of trafficking will not be helped by it. As prostitution is pushed further underground by increased criminalization of those working in the sex industry, it becomes harder for victims to report exploitation, rape and other violence, including trafficking.

Laws of this kind are part of a moral crusade. Some anti-prostitution groups, including some who call themselves feminist, claim that all prostitution is violence against women and that all immigrant sex workers are trafficked. But a recent crackdown on massage parlors showed that anti-trafficking laws are used primarily to tighten immigration controls and deport immigrant women, not to protect genuine victims.

The anti-trafficking lobby has used phony statistics to exaggerate the numbers of trafficked victims and to shut down online ads such as on Craigslist and Village Voice, claiming that these ads promote trafficking and exploitation. Sex workers protested that censoring ads made it harder for them to work independently–some were forced onto the streets where it is 10 times more dangerous to work. US PROS organized a counter protest of anti-trafficking feminist groups protesting Craigslist. We exposed those organizations which have profited from anti-trafficking funding without any consideration of the impact on sex workers’ rights and safety.

Sex worker-led actions like this are part of a growing movement for the decriminalization of prostitution which is gaining momentum and support.

In 2008 a voter initiative in San Francisco (Proposition K) called on the city to follow the example of New Zealand which had decriminalized prostitution in 2003 leading to clear improvements in safety. Despite ferocious campaigning by the Mayor, the District Attorney, anti-trafficking forces and the police, Proposition K won 41% of the vote. It was modeled on the recommendations of the path-breaking San Francisco Task Force on Prostitution, which called for the millions of dollars squandered on criminalizing sex workers to be redirected into community resources.

With the Homeless Coalition and others, US PROS has organized against recent Sit/Lie laws, which have increased the harassment of street workers, homeless people and immigrant day laborers. Sit/Lie has made it illegal to sit or lie on the sidewalk between 7am and 11pm in San Francisco. Claims that laws used against people on the streets are implemented in a racist way, are strengthened by evidence which shows that Black sex workers are seven times more likely to get arrested than their white counterparts. Occupy SF was the location of one of the actions where people spoke out against the criminalization of survival.

We’ve also taken action against serial rapists. With Legal Action for Women/SF we spearheaded a community monitoring initiative at the trial of serial rapist Jack Bokin. Bokin brutally attacked and raped four women, three of them sex workers. For two years, we co-ordinated a rota of people to attend court and pressed for justice for the victims. This public scrutiny was instrumental in ensuring a conviction and a prison sentence of 231 years. The case of Joseph Naso charged with killing at least four sex workers, is coming to trial soon and we intend to be there.

As cuts in benefits and services deepen, the numbers of women, young people, homeless and transgender people going into the sex industry increases. US PROS is part of a new national campaign to end the poverty of mothers and children by supporting two breakthrough bills in Congress: the WORK Act, by Pete Stark, to “provide low-income parents the option of staying home to raise young children without being pushed into poverty”; the RISE Act by Rep. Glenn Moore, which demands that “poverty reduction be put at the heart of welfare policy”. These bills signal a much needed change. From the point of view of sex workers, if mothers were given the recognition and support we deserve, women wouldn’t have to go into prostitution to feed our kids.

“Like women everywhere who do 2/3 of the world’s work for 5% of the world’s income, sex workers are fighting for more money and less work,” says Rachel West, US PROS spokeswoman. “If the billions currently squandered on war and destruction came to women, the primary caregivers everywhere, and to our communities to fulfill people’s needs, no one would be forced by poverty into sex with anyone. Our demand, increasingly taken up by others, is: Outlaw Poverty, Not Prostitution.”

For more information, visit US PROS’s website at www.uspros.net, contact us at uspros@prostitutescollective.net.

As a freelance broadcast technician, some days I have to get up at 3AM to run camera, lights, and sound for corporate news shows like Good Morning America, The Early Show, and Meet the Press. The combination of sleep deprivation and old white guys yakking routinely tests my ability to stay awake and attentive. In order to pass the time, I sometimes try to focus less on the news, and more on the construction of the news and its discourses, lending equal attention to form and content. The producers know that people will be watching through pre-coffee morning haze –these shows are called “Breakfast Television,” after all. So, what is being communicated underneath and between the script, so subtle it won’t distract from your toast, but so prevalent it structures the very way watch you watch? (What lends the anchor their authority as a speaker? Who’s wearing makeup, and how much? Who’s speaking on behalf of whom? What’s being sold?) These wonderings give me something to think about as I push the volume sliders up and down.

Fortunately, most weekdays I go to my other job (at a slightly more humane hour), where I talk to high schoolers about safer sex, birth control, sexuality, healthy relationships, and consent. My two jobs can seem worlds apart: one involves telecommunication, scripts, and advertising; the other, face-to-face interaction, empathy, and moments of sheer vulnerability. And yet, my students’ experiences (filtered through a background in radical sex and queer theory) challenge me to think about where and how media, school, and sex intersect, and what these intersections reveal about each.

* * *

On October 3rd of this past year, the American Family Association (AFA) published a press release “exposing” the Mix It Up at Lunch program, which once a year brings together students of different socioeconomic status, racial background, and sexual orientation at lunchtime in order to break down social cliques and isolation.

The AFA’s contention, broadcast by its leader, Bryan Fischer, in an interview on CNN, was that Mix it Up is “designed… to establish the acceptance of homosexuality into public schools… and push its gay agenda.”

There’s a lot being invoked in that soundbite, and it’s worth unpacking. When Bryan Fischer mentions “the acceptance of homosexuality into public schools,” he’s inserting himself into a history of homophobic fear-mongering that goes back a hundred years. George Chauncey has documented how in the 1930s and 40s gay men were characterized in public media campaigns as sexually abusing children, which set the stage for a long lineage of public homophobia justified in the unspoken interest of creating straight kids. Folks who were alive in the 1970s (or have seen the Harvey Milk biopic Milk) may remember California’s 1978 Briggs Initiative, which would have barred gays from teaching in public schools for fear that they’d make the students gay; others may find it helpful to think back to Proposition 8 in 2008, which banned gay marriage in California after supporters notoriously distributed literature featuring the slogan “Protect the Children!” Historically, few politicians have made the link as explicit as Senator Jesse Helms, who in 1989 sponsored an amendment to refuse federal funding to any organization “promot[ing]… or produc[ing] images of… homo-eroticism, [and] the sexual exploitation of children.” So it is not a stretch to say that when Bryan Fischer warns us about “the gay agenda,” this is a PG-13 way of claiming, “the homos in the cafeteria are going to make your kids gay and then fuck them in the ass.”

Of course, CNN’s anchor didn’t call Fischer out on what, exactly, he was insinuating with his talk of, “the acceptance of homosexuality into public schools.” (And to her credit, she eventually just cut him off.) Instead, here’s how the story played itself out: The center-left media took Fischer’s bait, accusing the AFA of a category mistake. Maureen Costello, Director of the lunch program, countered: “Teaching Tolerance and “Mix it Up” day have nothing to do with sexuality… Bryan Fischer sees the homosexual agenda in a dish of ice cream.” At first blush Costello’s response feels right; Mix It Up is about “breaking down barriers,” increasing diversity, and other laudable, standard liberal fare, none of which is explicitly gay. One can even imagine Mix It Up as an advertisement for heterosexuality, bringing together straight students of the “opposite” sex. As a logical refutation of Fischer’s bullshit, this might be a good start–but it also completely misses the point.

Fischer’s argument is a straw man: not just a “misrepresentation” of the Mix It Up program, as Costello put it, but an intentional one. That’s the bait. Fischer and the AFA get to unilaterally set the terms of the debate: to claim where “the homosexual agenda” is or isn’t present. The “homosexual agenda” is so historically overdetermined that it is literally undebatable, meaning homophobia becomes hard-wired as the very currency of the discourse. The stage is thus set for Fischer to blather on CNN, and for both Fischer and Costello to get quoted in the New York Times. Other news orgs, from ABC to the Huffington Post, as well as gay blogs like Queerty, Toweroad, the Human Rights Campaign’s blog, and JoeMyGod then run the story in this same he-said, she-said format. Two hundred schools drop out of Mix It Up, and another 180 join. Tit for tat.

What’s missing from the entire scuffle is anything remotely queer. No one questions whether the school cafeteria is really the asexual space that American liberalism insists it must be and pretends it already is. Within this premise, Fischer presents a nightmare that school could become a space for “alternative sexual behavior”; that if sex and school collide, students may question the narrative they’ve been fed about waiting until marriage, monogamy, procreation, and privacy as the bedrock of personhood. So the “homosexual agenda” is a trope for the threat not only to children’s sexual integrity (the physical integrity of their virginal hymens and assholes), but also the moral integrity that hinges on how, where, and whom they fuck. Costello’s assertion that “Mix It Up has nothing to do with [any] sexuality” is her ground for legitimacy because public youth sexuality is so haunted by the twin specters of pedophilia and gay recruitment that it is an all-or-nothing affair. Either there is no sexuality in the cafeteria, or the cafeteria is full of sweaty, queer bodies indoctrinating and fucking everywhere you look. Once the public debate has been set up this way, Costello has only one option–no sex. Such is the power of the trope of the “homosexual agenda.”

But this is exactly the point and the moment for critical intervention: the school cafeteria, like all non-explicitly-queer spaces (e.g., the rest of the school), is a sexual space–a heterosexual space. From the cutesy drawings of straight families on the mini milk cartons, to the narratives in history textbooks (which at best minoritize “gay rights” to a post-war footnote), to the gender-segregated bathrooms, to the posters for candidates for prom king and queen, to the abstinence-only or “family planning”-focused sex ed curriculum, to the school-sanctioned violence visited on queer and trans students, the cafeteria perpetuates the heterosexual indoctrination that is simply the background noise of American society. As Michael Warner puts it, heterosexuality is “the one thing celebrated in every film plot, every sitcom, every advertisement. It is the one thing to which every politician pays obeisance, couching every dispute over guns and butter as an effort to protect family, children, and home.” By pretending that the cafeteria isn’t already rife with straight sexuality, Costello et al. miss the opportunity to discuss whether it should be and what form it should take.

In other words, what Costello won’t ask is why it would be so fucking bad if two (or more) young women met at Mix It Up and decided to spend fourth period discovering their bodies together behind the bleachers. She won’t ask why it would be bad if a “homosexual agenda” were indeed being served up with the tater tots and chocolate milk–if, that is, the cafeteria were a little less straight. Nor, for that matter, will she ask what the homosexual agenda really is, and what it ought to be. And she can’t ask these questions because she’s already accepted Fischer’s terms of the debate, which are calculated to obscure the construction and ubiquity of heterosexuality, desexualize public space, and foreclose debate about queerness in schools. We need not look past the name of her program–Teaching Tolerance–to see why this concession was necessary. Tolerance –liberal egalitarianism as social policy–offers a place at the table in exchange for fealty to the status quo that bestowed the privilege to begin with. (Consider the gay marriage movement: gays and lesbians can cash in on the benefits of marriage as long as they don’t question the couple form, monogamy, and private property.) Tolerance says, “the queers in the corner deserve to eat lunch in peace like everybody else.” But it says nothing about why it might be awesome to be young and queer, much less what their straight peers, teachers, and parents could learn from them–if only they’d let themselves be “indoctrinated.”

Of course, we shouldn’t expect the mainstream press to ask students to question their sexuality. When stuff like this happens, the media producers’ goal is to win the debate on the terms in which it was found and score some rhetorical points (and ratings). It will poke holes in the sham arguments put forth and proclaim a job well-done. The homophobic fire will be temporarily extinguished, and mass attention will soon drift to the next news cycle. But that’s not to say we can’t learn from the mainstream press. Our suspicion that something is gravely lacking from the discussion can incite us to examine what’s not being asked, like how heterosexuality is at once ubiquitous and obscured at school. Further, the rabid focus on the “homosexual agenda” calls us to question the homophobia that frames the discourse. When’s the last time you heard a queer person non-ironically refer to the “homosexual agenda”? Never, which confirms what we’ve known for years: these words aren’t ours. More to the point, when’s the last time you heard anyone talk about the “straight agenda?” Rarely,* which means there’s a lot of room for us as queers to represent ourselves on our terms.

What I’m suggesting, then, is that we may be able to harness–in an interesting, potent way–the revulsion to corporate media that so many of us share. We can queer the media. These moments are opportunities to break the he-said, she-said confines of debate in order to question, reappropriate, and reinvent the terms–whether this transformation takes place over coffee, on an Internet forum, or live on Democracy Now. This doesn’t require that we grab a notepad and tune into CNN. (I, for one, would love to see the creation of a radical queer zine, The Homosexual Agenda, which would parody the term itself, offering a third way between homophobia and the heteronormative fetishizing of marriage.) The point is that we don’t have to be stuck in a binary of agreeing with what’s said (and buying what’s advertised), or tuning out.

Recently, as an experiment, I took Costello’s quip about Bryan Fischer “see[ing] the homosexual agenda in a bowl of ice cream” seriously, and to the website of the ice cream company closest to my house, Dryer’s. As of this writing, the three images rotate through their splash page portray: a woman cuddling with a young child who resembles her, each with a bowl of ice cream; a middle-aged man and woman feeding each other ice cream; and a woman handing bowls of ice cream to two children. A bowl of ice cream, evidently, is as much an advertisement for procreative, familial heterosexuality as it is for frozen dairy products. That we don’t immediately see the straight agenda swirled into the chocolate and caramel indicates only how well the dominance of heterosexuality, like fake sugars and preservatives, has been hidden.

* Note: The 2012 Yes on Prop 1 campaign deserves limited props for warning that schools would push a “radical straight agenda” in Maine if the proposed same-sex marriage law failed.

I think understandably, there is a lot of negativity in the radical movement. The atrocities that the system produces are on display everyday, and to varying degrees all of us have directly felt the effects of this white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, settler colonial, capitalist, ableist, sizeist, ageist society. There is so much worth fighting against, but what I have seen myself and others do too often, is take the aggressive mentality essential in challenging structural systems of oppression, and apply it to interpersonal relationships, where it is really not effective. I have seen and heard the tales of “fucked up”, privileged, ignorant behavior, to panels or presentations without the strongest analysis of power and privilege. But what I have not seen enough of are responses that recognize that mistakes are inevitable, and that help people move forward so that they will be less likely repeat those same mistakes.

Now being an extremely privileged person, there have been few times in my life that people’s language and behavior has felt personally oppressive (that they are oppressing me), and I am not here to tell anyone how to react when one’s own identity/body is marginalized, silenced, or attacked- it is not the responsibility of the oppressed to educate the oppressors. What I want to address is how those of us who share in a particular form of privilege could engage with one another when problematic behavior comes up, for example how I (a white person) could react when a white friend is considering wearing an Indian headdress for Halloween.

My most common reaction is silence, accompanied by judgment, which I then vent to others at a later point in time. This is common behavior for me at public discussions, or during the question period after panels. And when I do challenge people on problematic ways of thinking it seems to inevitably come out with a “look at how much more I know about anti-oppression politics than you do” kind of vibe. I also hear phrases such as “that was fucked up!” and “check your privilege” tossed around a fair bit. None of these strategies create meaningful dialogue, or help anyone move towards safer space and stronger movements. It is so important to realize that no one has the perfect analysis, most of us have privileges in some areas, and that we are all in the process of learning.

The ethic in these situations feels ironically similar to the (il)logic of the prison industrial complex, which so many are trying to dismantle: if I punish someone, they will learn from their mistakes. If I expose someone, the shame of their transgression will keep them from repeating their actions. Of course I’m not seriously comparing the effects of being locked in a cage to getting a few harsh words from a comrade, but what I’m getting at is that a culture of fear does not breed change. If I start a conversation in attack mode, the natural response is probably going to be defense mode, which is usually not the best mind set in which to be taking critique and making reflection. If folks coming into my circle are always afraid of saying something “fucked up” and then don’t say anything, they will most likely never get a chance to properly deconstruct the thought process that brought about the thought in the first place, and perhaps continue to think in problematic ways, hindering the work they are doing, and undermining the potential of a collective movement that benefits everyone.

What I strive for myself, and what I want from my community is a transformative justice approach to dealing with friends who act in ways we don’t agree with. Why don’t I approach people and say “I don’t know all the answers here, but what you said felt pretty weird, can we talk about it?” or “I used to think the same way, so I totally see where you’re coming from, but I think that way of thinking is problematic because…” Each person has been influenced by different contexts, and we were all exposed to radical ideas with the help of others, so expecting perfection from our comrades (or ourselves for that matter) is guaranteeing a stagnant, static movement, exiled to the sidelines of power.

The Revolution Starts at Home is a fantastic zine on the very serious issue of partner abuse within radical circles, looking at strategies to truly support survivors, while holding perpetrators accountable, which often requires a support system for the perpetrator as well. Considering the use of maintaining the humanity of all members involved in some of the most horrific of situations, with the goal being to create strategies for the perpetrator to actually change their behavior, there is absolutely no reason we cannot do the same under much lower stakes.

I do want to mention however, that as stories from The Revolution Starts at Home show, it can be extremely difficult or impossible to keep people accountable. There will be those friends who it will take many conversations to change, or will always dismiss critique from others. We have to be strategic about who we are trying to grow with, and where we put our time and physical/emotional energy.

A culture of collective education, respect and love is what revolutionary movements need, not out of liberal ideologies that the world would be a better place if we all just loved each other more, but out of the idea that these things are an integral part of becoming stronger together, and to creating radical change.

A couple brief endnotes:

1. Hand in hand with people being more strategic in their commentary, is the need for people to be open to receive commentary. Someone bringing up your mistakes does not make you a mistake. Take time to reflect on people’s comments, and try not to take it personally. In that spirit, if you have comments on this article, things you liked, completely hated, send them my way! akki.mackay@gmail.com

2. Thanks to folks from Catalyst Project for giving me pretty good real life version of these practices, and supplying me with interesting literature which influenced this piece, such as Tema Okun’s White Supremacy Culture. And thanks to the person who first exposed me to radical ideas, for the most part with impressive patience.

Zombies are on the move! There are even fast ones now… In 2009, Time magazine declared zombies “The Official Monster of the Recession.”

Zombies are quite odd, a dialectical unity of opposites…

On the one hand there is the zombie as the ultimate alienated laborer– in Haitian lore, zombies are the living dead, working sugar-cane fields by night–devoid of all feeling and facial expression. They don’t even have to be fed–presumably they fall into rotten pieces after a while–but hey–plenty more where they came from… Should they be feared? Coming across even one would make a person’s hair stand on end, and it would have a machete… but it would just keep working. Really to be feared would be its “employer,” the Haitian-American sugar company… (see “the Magic Island” by William Seabrook 1929).

On the other hand, there’s the zombie as implacable consumer.

George Romero with his 1968 film Night of the Living Dead originally thought of his creatures as ghouls… in a later film he has them attack a shopping mall… crazed consumers indeed…

The poet William Blake sums up his dialectical Method as: “without contraries is no progression.”

For every song of innocence (say, The Lamb) Blake will have a song of experience (The Tyger).

The Lamb

Little lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

Gave thee life & bid thee feed,

By the stream & o’er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight,

Softest clothing, wooly, bright;

Well, it’s hella namby-pamby by itself, but here’s The Tyger:

The Tyger

The zombie walks must continue, for they have revolutionary potential. I think a horde of zombies appeared in Oakland at a First Friday Art Murmur, shambling forth in defense of libraries. Also, zombies have interrupted anti-abortion rights rallies. These are a good start, but there is more awesome power to be unlocked!

At a costume party or masquerade ball, people are often able to access underused aspects of themselves, taking on the persona of the mask… Save your Guy Fawkes visages, occupiers…In the film Fight Club, members receive the homework assignment of going out and picking a fight, and losing! A lesson in the incredible power of not giving a flying fuck!

Does a zombie have anything left to lose? A pretty picture: each member of the zombie-bloc, when they put on the peeling flesh and open-sores of their costume has also put on the head-space of “I’m already dead.” Now they stumble towards the police lines, chanting:

What do we want? Brains!

When do we want it? Brains!

Here’s an idea so friggin’ radical you just may dismiss it out of hand. Well, that’s one possible narrative. I’m open to others.

Narrative sharing. It’s about opening up to one another’s life stories, regardless of political outlook or life experiences. We are all living our stories, are we not? But who really knows these stories if we speak mostly in general terms of political discourse? How can I get to know you, and you me, beyond politically shaped categories?

Narrative sharing. It’s about pushing back at being told what to think, and given space to fully experience oneself beyond our categories. What if available categories miss who you really are? Politically available categories tend to fit me like a tight pair of shoes, inhibiting me from strolling freely in public spaces. I’m transgender with a spiritual dimension, or so I am told. More authentically, I am a ‘transspirit’ with a transgender dimension. I am compelled to connect to deeper potentiality, prompting me to transgress the more divisive constructed norms. But without a narrative for others to follow, this notion tends to get lost in political terms. I am much more than can be captured in generalized terms of political rhetoric. I am fully human.

Narrative sharing. It’s about transgressing the norms for idea sharing, to get to the depths of emotional sharing. Anyone can disagree with my liberal, conservative, anarchist or libertarian views, or my lack thereof. But who dares disagree with my anguished feelings about being a Native American in colonized spaces? Who dares dispute my emotions about being asexual amongst a sea of sexual privilege? Can anyone argue with my visceral reactions to being trapped within the American gulag? I mean, really, is it ever wrong to feel a certain way?

Are not emotions merely messengers, to the message of beliefs? And what point is there in shooting the messenger? Or in following the dominant culture notion that all feelings must be subordinated to rational thought, as if my thoughts and feelings should not be integrated with equal value? Narrative shares the emotions and the beliefs; political discourse tends to skip the wealth of vulnerable emotions and goes straight for defending beliefs. How engaging is that for others we seek to reach?

By sharing my narrative I expose the feelings that indicate my beliefs. I neither defend nor reject them, I simply acknowledge their existence and expose their level of importance to me. Since I don’t have to qualify my beliefs I feel free to share how I arrived at such beliefs. It’s a vulnerable space I protect from premature repudiation, to preserve intimate awareness. In the process I naturally invite others to more deeply feel their beliefs, to repudiate their own thinking norms, and find their own truth.

Narrative sharing tends to be more inviting and potentially more engaging than our typical Western styled didactic approaches. It invites others to relate in their own terms. Narrative sharing doesn’t ask for agreement, rather it asks for sharing the journey to those experiences shaping our beliefs. Political generalizations have an insidious way of overemphasizing our differences. Narratives potentially spark awareness of our common humanity, where it transcends all divisions and disharmony.

Transcending political differences

Not to say there is no place for political discourse. Can we do a little of both? Is there some way to integrate the two? Is there some way to invite understanding without relying so narrowly upon political rhetoric? Raw discourse is great when appealing to a mindset ready to share our beliefs, but can easily alienate a broader audience ready to empathize with our cause if expressed through a relatable character and plot driven narrative. The privileged white liberal has some experiences in common with the anarchist person of color, but if they start with their political differences, trying to convince one another of the rightness of their views, they will tend to keep invisible this potential for empathetic connection.

Understandably, sharing opinions feels safer in mixed company than exposing our feelings. The more diverse we find ourselves, the more we tend to depend upon the common ground of shared generalizations. Like traditional gender and sexuality norms getting in the way of our full potential, I find other interpersonal norms limiting our optimal possibilities. That includes imposed political divisions, as well as the constructed divide between rational thought sharing and emotional narrative sharing.

Narrative sharing challenges these norms of privileged alienation. By privileged alienation I mean the normalization of social spaces with others we barely know and accords advantages to those who function well with little if any intimate awareness of one another. It is a privilege skewed toward those with recognizable identities and against those with emergent identities. Who can know me as a transspirit if they have never heard of this potentiality?

Narrative sharing empowers us to transcend those political differences presumed in the norms of what Max Weber called rational-legal authority. Instead of constantly negotiating fluid social spaces, legal-rational authority allows us to settle for policies and norms established by our supposed cultural and political leaders who lay down the norms for us all to follow. That allows someone’s behavior on the West Coast to be readily predictable for someone on the East Coast. This mitigates stranger anxiety; otherwise the unpredictability of others would potentially make strangers of us all.

But such normative familiarity tends to stifle the diversity of human potential. Through narrative sharing we may find ways to explore such diverse human potential, as it finds expression in our unique experiences of gender and sexuality. I suspect nature counters this stifling of wholeness through organically atypical sexualities and gender modes. By being compelled to integrate my inner feminine and masculine ascribed energies I am naturally propelled toward communion of what is normatively alienated. This could create subject matter for a compelling, attention grabbing narrative.

Meanwhile, our unique experiences tend to be shared exclusively among group members and remain poorly understood outside of our social circles. In-group diversity tends to challenge any one-size-fits-all narrative, but is it not possible to craft a narrative with enough ambiguity to be more inclusive? Is it not possible to craft a narrative that starts to open vistas to welcome others’ insight into our uniquely shared experiences and needs? Or is it possible to craft a politics that allows others to understand me well enough to enter my space?

Transpolitical

For me, politics make good windows, but poor doors. They’re great for looking into my world and getting a sense about what is inside, but no one may enter simply by approaching me with some trusted sociopolitical category. As a transspirit, I tend to defy just about every constructed category put upon me, and even scapegoated for not easily fitting in where expected. This definitely includes any political categories. As a transspirit I am not only transgender, I am also trans-political. Pulled toward connecting to all potential, I naturally transgress the political divide. I naturally yearn to connect to all across the political spectrum.

As I listen to the narrative of my conservative friends I hear them expressing their ego needs as more pressing than their social needs. Their sense of belonging tends to be richly met in their close-knit circles. But who they are individually, with unsettling erotic desires or anxieties toward a larger impersonal world crashing in on their smaller tightly-knit circles, appears painfully exposed and wanting. To fill that void, I see them gravitating toward ideals of individualism, as an ideological or even pragmatic hope to ease the pains of unmet ego needs. If by some chance they can actually ease their strained ego needs, I see them becoming less dogmatically conservative.

Likewise, as I listen to the narrative of my liberal friends I hear them expressing their social needs as more pressing than their ego needs. Their sense of identity tends to be richly met with a strong sense of who they are in any social environment. But who they are socially, negotiating where and how their unique selves may fit into their many social environments, appears painfully exposed and wanting. To fill that void, I see them gravitating toward ideals of collectivism, as an ideological or even pragmatic hope to ease the pains of unmet social needs. If by some chance they can actually ease their strained social needs, I see them becoming less dogmatically liberal.

When attempting to critique their political views they tend to react as if it was an attack. They circle the wagons, only to reinforce the very views I invited them to question. Often, all I am doing is attempting to share some wisdom to perchance open a dialogue to their life stories. It is not my intent to impress them with my words of wisdom, as if I could ever change their political views. As long as their needs swing toward imbalance (and who of us doesn’t by at least some degree?), I don’t see any amount of convincible rhetoric will ever sway them.

Narrative sharing isn’t about demanding a change in one’s beliefs. But it can begin an exploration to uncover the experiences and their interpretations leading to our hardened beliefs. Instead of my ideas asking them to see what’s inside my head, my narrative invites them to come and see what’s in my heart. And it’s mutual. I’d rather relate to what they honestly feel than sort through what they think. Yeah, it goes both ways. Like most of them, I’m open to any opinion, except those being crammed down my throat.

Steph Turner served as editor to a zine for and by trans/GNC prisoners (2005-2008) till the money ran out, and was a regular contributor to Fort Wayne’s (IN) Reality Magazine (2009-2010) till the money ran out and it folded too. After earning a master’s in public admin with a nonprofit emphasis and serving as a strategic planning consultant to a statewide trans org, Steph is currently working on a second master’s degree, in counseling, at least till the money runs out.

Fun Tips & Tricks to Confuse Cameras

By Anonymous

Surveillance cameras are increasingly forced into public spaces without warning. They are everywhere. If this is the environment we must engage with, then we will use all the tools at our disposal in resisting the processes of facial recognition. The liberal logic of transparency validates the existence of such technologies–one can think back to Aeon Flux which depicts a society where transparency is fetishized and exploited by politicians to at once control the masses and to construct their own spectacular presence. The American center-left is full of what Noam Chomsky would call proto-fascists: closet authoritarians who are quick to dismiss their presented permissive openness for the goal of societal control. Without further ado, here are some simple tips to resist surveillance culture in your town.

Make a Map – Surveillance cameras exist in physical spaces. Knowing where they are is part of the fun. Meet up with friends and split an area into digestible pieces. Now walk through your area, making note of where the cameras are. Pool the information found together with your team and then map it. After you have your map, you can figure out which routes avoid surveillance and which territories to be vigilant within.

Paint Your Face – Facial recognition software focuses on the area from the bridge of your nose to where your eyes meet. Avoid make-up that will highlight distinct facial characteristics like eye shadow and lipstick. Since most software converts photos to black-and-white, monochromatic face-paint works best. Do what you can to scramble your face. Obscure shadows. Think asymmetrically.

Style Your Hair – Use the same approach as you did with your subversive make-up. Asymetricality is key. Cover as much of your face as possible. Especially the area between your eyes and nose. Extra points for cheek coverings.

Smile – When taking photographs for the state (driver’s license photos, mugshots, etc.) make sure to smile. Facial expressions that change the distances of your facial features make it harder for software to recognize your neutral face. Extra points for weirdo expressions.

Turn the Camera Around – If you can, move the camera. Make it face a wall so that its surveillance days are temporarily over.

Bag on the Camera – Get a shopping bag and tie it over an accessible surveillance camera.

Picture Perfect – Trick the camera with a picture of the very street scene it is supposed to be capturing. Set it up in front of the camera lens. See how long it lasts!

Stand in Solidarity with Berliners – 19 February 2013 will see the European Police Congress in Berlin. In preparation, German anarchists of the anti-surveillance CAMOVER are asking people to participate in a game. The only rules: see how many cameras you can covertly destroy. CAMOVER is also calling for a demo on the 16th of February at 8 pm in Mariannenplatz, Berlin.

Dear Slingshot,

I was happy to see Alex making the effort to keep prisoners in the loop with their article “RABBID Wants You to Write Prisoners.” Hey Alex, I dig mail! I also really dig that Alex did not refer to us as “inmates,” a term of derision inside the walls (Liane Apple, please take note). However, Alex should know that there’s no such thing as a “Prison Industrial Complex (PIC).” This is a misnomer Angela Davis has been trumpeting for years, and as far as I can tell, she made it up. It falsely implies that somehow various governments, state and federal, are making money from prisons, when nothing could be further from the truth. Even with our slave labor, the profits, if any, are negligible and prisons are bleeding state budgets and taxpayers dry. There is nothing “industrial” or “complex” about prison, so people should refrain from using this misleading terminology.

In counter-rhythm,

Rand Gould C-187131

Thumb Correctional Facility

3225 John Conley Dr.

Lapeer, MI 48446

Dear Rand,

Thanks for writing! We dig mail too! But I’m going to keep using the term “Prison Industrial Complex” and here’s why:

The body of a prisoner is a hot commodity under capitalism. Every aspect of a prisoner’s life is parceled up by the government and auctioned off to corporations. Multinational powerhouses such as Sodexo, Aramark, Westinghouse, GEO Group Inc, Correctional Communications Corp., Sprint, and AT&T (to name a few) have won massive government contracts to exclusively sell or rent their shitty food, furniture, facilities, vehicles, surveillance & communications technologies to prisons at inflated prices. (Ever wonder why it costs six times the normal amount to make a collect call from prison? …this would be why.) Some corporations–such as American Express and General Electric–have gone so far as to construct private prisons in Oklahoma and Tennessee which they rent out to the state at a profit.

With over 1 percent of the American population behind bars at this time, the prison market is booming and CEOs are scrambling to get a piece of the pie. As of 2011, total state spending on corrections reached about $52 billion–which is double the cost it was ten years before. Taxpayers are picking up this enormous bill, which subsidizes the corporations that profiteer off prisons.

The irony of all this–or “strategic investment incentive,” depending on your point of view–is that prisons create more crime. Once you have prison time on your record, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to ever get a legit job again. In most states, you can’t even receive food stamps. After release, many former prisoners find they must engage in criminal activity to survive. It’s a vicious cycle, with over 40% of folks released from prison ending up back behind bars within 3 years.

It would seem the system is designed to keep its captive market captive, with the lobbyists and PR specialists that write the laws and control the mainstream media ensuring that the War on Drugs and fear of crime are used to legitimize the PIC to the taxpaying public.

Perhaps it isn’t a surprise that the emergence of the Prison Industrial Complex can be traced to banking tycoon Nelson Rockefeller, who, as governor of New York, signed the controversial Rockefeller Drug Laws into effect in May 1973. These laws instituted minimum sentencing of 15 years for possession of narcotics, criminalizing the choices made by consenting adults about what they do with their own bodies. These laws became the model for future drug laws that have dramatically bolstered the prison population.

Also, I wouldn’t discount the economic impact of prison labor. Around 1.6 million people are in state & federal prisons (as of the last U.S. census in 2010), and every able-bodied one of them is required to work. Prison laborers are paid between 23 cents and $1.15 an hour for manufacturing clothing, solar panels, weapons, etc. Although it is illegal for Federal Prison Industries (also called “Unicor”) to sell prisoner-made goods to consumers, the government purchases these goods, replacing private sector companies. The result is the elimination of manufacturing jobs, decreased wages, and subsequent damage to the economy. Last year, NASA contracted prisoners at San Quentin to make Satellite parts for pennies an hour–a job once reserved for unionized engineers. Soon, the products of prison labor will be floating between us and the stars.

I wish I could say that this is all some freakish accident. But the truth is, this is exactly how capitalism is supposed to operate. The Prison Industrial Complex is simply an extreme example of the way capitalism hijacks the lives of all workers: thanks to private property laws and the taking of the commons, the working class has been made doubly-free–We are free from the ability to provide for ourselves, and free to sell our labor to bosses. Ironically, capitalism’s exploitative double-freedom operates just as easily behind bars.

Over the last two decades, similar trends of privatization have occurred in education and medicine, with corporations increasingly forcing themselves into the lives of people who interact with those spaces. Last year, in the tiny college town of Davis, a group of students and teachers shut down a bank on their campus through peaceful protest. Now they are facing 11 years in jail. The corporations are determined to invade every scrap of public space left in the world, and if they deem you a threat to this conquest, you will end up serving them in prison.

In contra-rhyme,

Teresa Smith of the Slingshot Collective