Category: Articles

In November, a measure to ban sitting and lying on commercial sidewalks will be on the ballot in Berkeley. This is being posed under the guise of protecting local businesses, and protecting the rights of shoppers to not be intimidated by houseless people. The first time you get cited, it’s an infraction with a $75 fine or community service. Subsequent citations can be charged as a misdemeanor. The proposed ordinance says it should be applied in a way that doesn’t discriminate. Who the hell do they think they are kidding? The whole thing is discriminatory. The measure says that banning sitting and lying is “the only practicable solution,” to Telegraph Avenue’s problems. Horseshit.

The law would allow the police to push the envelope even further than they already do. Berkeley Copwatch has seen increased harassment and violence against houseless people by the police over the last few months, as the police anticipate this measure becoming law.

Some business owners are adamant that this is necessary to protect the city and the economy. Telegraph Avenue is the site of some particularly aggressive business owners. Al Geyer – owner of Annapurna headshop – said that the City of Berkeley looked “like a joke,” when they didn’t have enough police for his taste. Marc Weinstein – owner of Amoeba Records – has been demanding the city pay more attention to the Telegraph area. By this he means doing things that are good for his business, including more police. Craig Becker – owner of Cafe Mediterranean – was the go-between between the Chief of Police and the business community in announcing a new police bike/foot patrol, which started April 30. All this is documented in emails Berkeley Copwatch received from the city via a Public Records Act request.

Curiously, all three of these establishments like to bask in the glow of Berkeley as a place of alternative culture and politics, as long as they get to run the show and make money selling things that people don’t really need. This makes them vulnerable to a well-coordinated, sustained boycott campaign, but Berkeley Copwatch is not calling for a boycott.

There has been much made of “uncivil” and “problematic behavior” on sidewalks. The measure does not talk about crime. In fact, the word “crime” appears only once, and specifically does not refer to street youth. So, what do those words mean? Does it mean houseless people are obstructing sidewalks? Actually, they aren’t, and there is already a law against obstructing sidewalks, which is regularly enforced against people who aren’t obstructing the sidewalk. Does it mean houseless people are on a rampage of murder, rape, robbery, and other crimes of violence? They aren’t, and there are laws against those things too. Are they intimidating business patrons? If they are, it is only because business patrons don’t like seeing poor, underprivileged kids hanging out in the street while they spend money. Businesses claim the kids are bad for business, but is this true? Houseless youth spend money in the areas they hang out in — they are helping keep businesses like the Caffe Mediteranneum afloat. Curious.

So, what is “problematic behavior?” It is a repugnant excuse to keep certain people out of public view. This is really about keeping society clean. This is the sinister aspect of this. The street youth aren’t criminal, they aren’t harming businesses, but they don’t look good. Perhaps they remind us of reality. Perhaps privileged people with money don’t want to recognize the fucked-up nature of society. There are those who want to cleanse the city. There are those who want to move certain people as far away as possible. What’s going to happen when kids can’t hang out on the sidewalk? As veteran homeless attorney / advocate Osha Neumann has pointed out, where will they go? The parks? That will go over great. Then we’ll just push them out of the parks in a program of park cleaning. Aha! Homeless encampments in the park! We must now cleanse the parks! And so on, and so on, until they don’t exist. But poor people will still exist somewhere. It may be primarily behind bars, but the cleansing project can move forward, and more and more groups of people can be eliminated from society because they are “problematic” or “uncivil.”

Berkeley Copwatch is an all-volunteer, non-partisan police accountability organization. Interestingly enough, the impetus for our existence came in 1990 on Telegraph Avenue during a police crackdown on the houseless community. If you are interested in getting involved, contact us at (510) 548-0425, or berkeleycopwatch@yahoo.com. Check us out at www.berkeleycopwatch.org.

July 21, 2012. Police observe three men in a car. These men appear “suspicious” to police. When the police approach the men, they flee. The police chase after one man in particular, Manuel Angel Diaz. The chase ends when the police shoot the man in the back of the head. The man dies. He is 25 years old.

What is notable is not the fact of the police execution, unfortunately: police murder is an all-too-common event in communities of color. But the quickness of local residents’ reaction against the police — the manifestation of area residents’ aversion to the police, their utter distrust and hostility — is exemplary. Within hours, local residents gather; some throw rocks and bottles at police. Police shoot the crowd with bean bags and pepper balls, and release a canine on a mother and her child. The police reaction to the crowd is not surprising. The only hope is that area residents respond in kind. And they do. Helicopters shine spotlights on the crowds that remain in the streets. Small groups of people light dumpsters on fire.

July 22, 2012. A “gang officer” spots a “recognized gang member” in a stolen vehicle. The officers pursue the individual. Shots are exchanged, allegedly. The police kill 21-year-old Joel Acevedo. A handgun is found near the dead man, according to police.

The man who runs is shot in the back. The man who shoots back is also killed. The only certainty is death at the hands of the police.

The counter-insurgency mobilizes. By way of media accounts, the police murders become “incident[s].” Local government bureaucrats and ‘community leaders’ call for “investigations.” Investigations by the police, the district attorney, the FBI. The “truth” must be discerned. Media figures attempt to understand and explain the phenomena that took place in the streets. The police attempt to de-legitimize the uprising as the product of “outsiders” to the “community.” But the attempt fails when the police’s own statistics reveal that the arrestees from Saturday night were overwhelmingly from Anaheim. Making the necessary adjustments, the police identify the uprisings as the product of “gang members.” It is now the status of “gang member” that the police ascribe to any person whom is dealt state violence.

Meanwhile, the police prepare for war. The Anaheim Police Association publicly justifies the police murders. In response to the murmurs of uprising, the police increase their street patrols: “‘We have more officers on the street to preserve the peace,’ Anaheim police Chief John Welter said” according to the Orange County Register.

July 24, 2012. Hundreds converge at City Hall. City leaders abort the meeting when protests outside turn “violent.” Hundreds of protesters take the streets. They light dumpsters on fire and smash the windows of businesses. They throw bricks and even Molotovs at police. Police attack the unruly crowd with batons, rubber bullets, and pepper balls. The crowd refuses to disperse.

July 25, 2012. Manuel Diaz’s mother calls for a “peaceful justice” “within the law” to avenge her son’s death. But, with all due respect, this is an impossibility: the police murder within the law, and therefore by definition police cannot commit murder; they are immune, because in a very real sense, they are the law. “Guilt” and “innocence” are but two faces of the same coin. What’s at issue is who has the license of the State to kill. Those executed by police are, by necessity, guilty.

Concerned liberals set to work to figure out what went wrong — how could the crowd’s violence have been averted; how can the city reform its police so as to avoid widespread antipathy by the policed? Racists salivate at the idea of the State’s brute repression of brown people. The non-profits and community organizations attempt to intervene in the conflict: as the “representatives” of the community harboring the unruly crowd, they are valuable to the City in that they are entities the City can negotiate with and that communicate the (alleged) desires of the unruly crowd in a language the City understands. “Tourism officials” assure “tourists” that the uprisings are isolated occurrences — Disneyland is safe.

July 29, 2012. What is striking is not necessarily the police’s preparedness for war, but rather their obvious neglect to obscure their role as a counter-insurgency force. Thus, instead of donning the traditional riot uniform and the baton, the police wear military fatigues and are armed with rifles and less-than-lethal weapons that closely resemble grenade launchers. The image conjured is not South Central Los Angeles, 1992, but Afghanistan, 2012. Not urban riot, but urban insurgency. And next to the commando, there is the atavistic mounted police, reference to a past form of brute repression. In the shadow of the Happiest Place on Earth, we see that the police are not merely tasked with disciplining populations, but also with annihilating those who refuse to subordinate themselves to the State. Viewed with this lens, the police assassination of Emanuel Diaz was not an aberration, but the elimination of a body that would not submit to law — an entirely rational act within the logic of modern policing.

The Orange County Register vigorously extends the counter-insurgency operation, discovering that the outside-agitator narrative is appropriate for the situation. The headline for July 30, 2012, reads: “Most unruly protesters from outside Anaheim, police say: Seven of nine people arrested during Sunday’s demonstrations outside police headquarters live outside city limits.” “[M]any of those obscuring their faces with bandanas and carrying gas masks were not from Anaheim.” Those who come prepared to fight the police, and those who cannot be driven out by the violence of the police are discursively expelled from ‘the community.’ They are “from elsewhere.”

Ever adept, power understood the ineffectiveness of its calls for ‘dialogue’ after the “unruly” communicated their hatred of that-which-is in a cacophony of broken glass and burning dumpsters. Adjusting to Sunday’s events, power sanctified the ‘silent’ protesters who police themselves.

July 31, 2012. In the wake of the uprisings, power again attempts to blunt the active struggle through “dialogue.” The mayor of Anaheim visits the site of Diaz’s murder and “listens” to the concerns of area residents. Liberal-progressive groups demand more Latino representation on the city council. The slogan “Our Voices Count” sums up the counter-insurgency effort: creating channels for communicating with power, on the one hand, and directing the destructive popular rage into a quantitative dimension. The city council, in turn, convenes a special meeting to hear residents’ concerns: “City leaders recognize that there is a need for additional community dialogue and discussion.” “Members of the Anaheim community are invited to come and present their thoughts, ideas and recommendations on ways to help improve the city and its relationship with its people, their neighborhoods and their government.” How can we police you more effectively, power asks? Such is the nature of “constructive dialogue” between the police and policed, only to be surpassed by the question asked by the person colonized by power: how can we police ourselves?

And indeed there is a need to communicate — but only with each other, not them. And the communication called for is not of the sort mediated through the pages of the press or the councils of governing bodies. Communication takes the form of attack against mutual enemies. The bricks thrown at Anaheim police find their solidaric counterpart in the shattered windows of the police bar in downtown Oakland.

Proposition 37 on the November ballot in California “Requires labeling of food sold to consumers made from plants or animals with genetic material changed in specified ways [and] prohibits marketing such food, or other processed food, as ‘natural’.” Genetically engineered food is a big deal. Yeah, there’s a lot of “big” to be worried about these days, but the future of food is indicative of the future.

Monsanto and other big agricultural corporations are conspiring to control food in a way that is evil, stupid and destructive.

Genetic Engineering has been around little more than 30 years. In this short time, Monsanto and others have managed to legalize and patent these new life forms, exempt them from government testing, avoid labeling, and corner the market on the production of some food staples with their patented, engineered seed.

The results? Over 90% of US grown soy uses “Round-up Ready” seed which is genetically engineered to survive applications of Round-up herbicide. This has facilitated the spraying of millions of pounds of Round-up on crop lands which then leaches into waterways. Our food now contains more herbicide and questionable genetic ingredients. Monsanto has trapped and sued many farmers into a devil’s bargain of buying their seed and herbicide repeatedly. And as predicted by any sane biologist, weeds have become resistant to the Round-up and now chemical companies are scrambling to legalize crops resistant to their stronger, more toxic herbicides (like 2,4-D, an ingredient in Agent Orange).

In the meantime, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been allowed into the US food supply, without labeling or tracking, onto a mostly un-informed populace. It is estimated that about 70% of processed food in an American supermarket contains some GMOs. They are in non-organic corn, soy, canola, cotton and all their by-products, oils, corn syrup, soy sauce, dairy from cows treated with rBST, and sugar beet sweeteners.

And conveniently for the chemical food giants, there are no easy ways to link this with any of the strange new illnesses and allergies that have been occurring. There was NO ONE I knew with a wheat allergy when I was young. Okay, I’m not a professional scientist, but have there been any studies about GMO’s effects on our intestinal flora, for instance?

Monsanto and co. are pros at manipulating political and regulatory processes and the media and legal system. A judge just refused to hear a case brought against Monsanto by thousands of farmers and concerned people to protect them against being sued for having been contaminated by Monsanto’s GMO seeds, as the Canadian farmer Percy Shmeister was.

I once attended a sparse Berkeley City Council meeting that also happened to have a decision before the council about whether to ban milk from cows that had been treated with a genetically engineered growth hormone from school lunches. I found myself sitting in back of a row of about a dozen unfamiliar suit and tie folks with briefcases. The council decided against banning this milk in the Berkeley Public school system and the row of un-Berkeley like folks simultaneously arose and exited, seemingly quite pleased with themselves.

And now Monsanto etc. are throwing millions against the initiative on this fall’s California ballot to label food that contains GMOs. Monsanto thinks that people will choose not to buy and eat food with GMOs if they can figure out what foods contain them. And they are right. So far, the American public has been the world’s GMO guinea pigs. Given knowledge and choice, we may try to quit.

The way food is produced has major effects. The dystopia of a Monsanto monopoly on food would be horrible. Large farms would grow unhealthy food by pumping chemical fertilizers onto dead soil. Water would be depleted and contaminated and the natural world assaulted by increasingly toxic herbicides. This dystopia could lead to ecosystem collapse and famine.

There are healthy and sustainable ways to produce food. Look to localized permaculture systems. These offer decentralized control of our food, perhaps with more hands-on participation, which can be a health benefit in itself. We can derive food from living natural ecosystems which offer abundance, beauty and enjoyment. We can be nourished by this earth without destroying it. But we will have to push back against Monsanto. Start your own gardens. Buy local and organic food. Research GMOs. Save your own seeds. Glean and forage. We have fed ourselves like this for ages.

Proposition 37 gives Californians a chance to label GMOs this November. Monsanto will play dirty to defeat it with confusing and powerful TV ads. All we’ve got is ourselves to retake control of our lives. This matters!!!

“Those who have the privilege to know, have the duty to act.” – Albert Einstein

It’s a street demonstration in the United States of America and the crowd chants: “Whose streets? OUR streets!” I look around at the sea of faces descended from Europeans and think: these streets were built on stolen land. The burial ground of an indigenous tribe is underneath this street. After 500+ years we are still invaders. If you find yourself in a meeting surrounded by people of the same race and your goal is to save the world, you should start wondering: who are you saving the world for? I look around at this gathering of white Americans and think: this must be what it looked like when Columbus landed here 500 years ago to meet the indigenous tribes who lived here for 50,000 years.

We could all forgive and forget if only we had made reparations, righted the wrong, but we are still colonizing this country. Native American reservations are still the poorest places in the nation. The government and corporations take the coal under Native American reservations using deceit. Parking garages are built on top of Native American burial grounds. In Minneapolis the African American community is the most unemployed of all races here. Prison populations for people of color are far higher than for white people. People of color are still treated with prejudice and suffer more than whites. A tornado lands in north Minneapolis and tears the place up, black residents can’t get reasonable help. It’s like our own little version of Hurricane Katrina.

I’m privileged to have a job. Privileged to have a house. Privileged to have a car. Privileged to get detained by the cops and be given only a ticket or a warning, not hauled to jail and eventually to prison. I’m privileged to be around other people of European descent who don’t judge me because of my race. I’m privileged to have grown up with both parents, and that they are still together. I’m privileged that people look at me and think I’m one of the good guys because my skin is light. Every movie I ever saw growing up depicted dark skinned people as the villains. Racism was always there. Subtle, but always there. Yesterday a black man walked up to me and smiled, and in my mind I thought, “Oh no, a black man!” like I should be afraid. Where does that thinking come from? I don’t remember anyone telling me that black people were bad, and that’s it: the racist teachings we experience growing up are subtle, but they spread thru everything so that we don’t even notice when we’re being taught racism. Why is the dark skinned guy the villain in the movie? Because the light skinned guys are the good guys, that’s just the way it is. It’s taken years of being thoughtful about racism to move towards overcoming those feelings. Sometimes I think that the early childhood training I had in racism will always be a part of my mind. I grew up in a world that believed in the Other as less human than Us.

It sucks having someone remind you of the privilege you have just because of the race you were born as. A finger points at you and you feel defensive. You! What, who, me? Yes you! Your people committed genocide and ethnocide and your people were slave owners! Okay, it’s true, Europeans came here 500 years ago and did all this, and here we are the descendents, but that was before my time. Why do I gotta deal with the fallout from the bad decisions my ancestors made? Well it’s true, we’re not responsible for the actions of our ancestors, we can’t time travel and stop them from doing what they did. But we are responsible for our actions, in this present moment, and we benefit from having light skin, we benefit from being perceived as part of the people who rule this country. It’s changing, yeah, it’s changing. Slowly. Maybe once we’ve had 500 more years of non-white presidents then we can talk about a post-racial society.

When someone says, “White people take everything, except the burden,” it rings true, but it hurts too. I make minimum wage at my job. I bust my ass and there’s usually only two digits worth of money in my bank account. I live in a house with six other people cause I can’t afford anything else. I’m on food stamps and public health care. I have worked for years busting ass building houses for other people, yet I do not have a house of my own. I also chose to quit jobs and go travel, hitch hike, ride trains, build boats out of trash and live on them for months, and then go back to the city and get a job and live in a house. Without my white skin, how easy would it be for me to have done all this? If I wanted, I could probably get a high paying job and have lots of money. I’ve never tried it, but I bet that my skin color would make it a lot easier. Everything I saw growing up told me that I could do anything I wanted, and the people who did whatever they wanted all looked white like me.

I feel burdened sometimes, the basic human burden of being alive, but one burden I don’t have to deal with is 500 years of my people being oppressed by another people who are still occupying my land. I don’t have to live in a country that my ancestors were brought to against their will and where they were forced to work, generation after generation. The United States was founded on stolen land and stolen labor. Indigenous tribes and African Americans were exploited by our European ancestors, that’s how the U.S. achieved dominance in the world textile market, the stepping-stone to later world domination. I am descended from this colonial royalty; my ancestors were the thieves and the murderers. This system of exploitation still exists, and that is why 500 more years of Capitalism won’t actually free anyone.

A conclusion that modern feminism has arrived at is this: for one person to be free, all people must be free. Capitalism doesn’t care what race people are, it only demands that there be a small percentage exploiting the large majority. If the small percentage of exploiters is multi-racial, multi-cultural, so be it, Capitalism is happy. The continuation of Capitalism could lead to a racially blind exploitation, where everyone is exploited, without discrimination. Capitalism is like a virus; it will mutate to survive.

The inherent exploitation is so deep in our culture that we don’t even notice it. Sports teams are still named after indigenous tribes. Villains in movies are still dark skinned. Individuals participate in cultural appropriation. What is the difference between unethical cultural appropriation and an ethical acculturation? When the power dynamic between two people is not equal, then cultural appropriation may happen, such as when a person of European descent wears a feathered headdress, which mimics the feathered headdress of Native American tribes. Let’s say a Native American and a European met up on some path somewhere 500 years ago with no history of exploitation between these people, and the Native American gave the European a beaded headband with feathers in it and the European gave the Native American a necklace with a silver crucifix on it. This would be acculturation, on equal ground. What if the European pointed a gun at the Native American’s head and demanded the beaded feathered headband? This would be cultural appropriation, and that is what has been going on for the past 500 years, which is why it’s not okay for people of European descent to dress up and act like Native Americans. The same applies to the cultural appropriation of African American culture. When white kids take up hip hop and rapping, why does that feel different than when a rapper samples a European sound like a cello and uses it in a song? If you look at the big picture, you will see there is a different power dynamic, and that is the difference. African Americans were brought into the culture of European style music in America by force. White kids TAKE hip hop and rap because they like it and they want to be cool. Native Americans and African Americans were forced to become Christians by the colonial Europeans. White people TAKE Native American and African American spirituality as their own, without asking.

There is much crossover now. Cultures now mingle at an accelerating rate, so that sometimes it’s hard to tell where one started and the other begins. More crossover will continue happening too. It’s natural for peoples to share their culture: art, music, language, fashion, technology, and for cultures to create new things out of the fusion. If you think about it, it will be obvious. If you are of European descent, don’t dress your kids up as Indians for Halloween, and if you feel like you want to pick up rapping, you better think about it. If you grew up in the culture, if you were welcomed into it and think you should rock it, then rock it, and suffer the judgment. Are you flexing your white privilege by appropriating the culture of an oppressed culture, or are you really part of it? If a person of color calls you out on something you’re rocking, then take it to heart, think about it, because you are probably not the first clueless colonial they’ve met.

(Thanks to the Women of Color in Science Fiction panel at Galacticon 2009, and thanks to everyone who participated in the discussion on White Privilege at Idapalooza 2012, and to the article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh.)
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It was raining in Hana, Hawai’i, like it does on most evenings, when some friends and I hitch-hiked as far as we could to get to a party we’d heard about, giggling while getting poured on in the beds of pickup trucks. Having turned off of the highway to a less-trafficked road, we were walking the rest of the way to the land the party was being held on. I’m not much for partying all night in general, and I especially was not then, when I had been going to sleep at dusk and waking up at dawn. But we were on a remote island in the South Pacific, where, as one friend put it, “you take any kind of social situation you can get.” There, I was forced to do nothing much more than relax and read books from the library all day. On the way to the party, we were stopped by a man standing in his driveway, telling us that we were on a private road.

“I didn’t see any ‘private road’ signs,” one of my friends told him.

“Um.. it’s dark, we probably just missed it,” I explained, knowing that that was probably not the case, but feeling like I didn’t want to piss this guy off any more. I also wanted to respect him. He was a Native man and he was upset that one of his white neighbors was having a party. It seemed like his neighbor had parties a lot. He had asked him not to have any more, the pulsing electronic music vibrating through the earth and keeping him awake too often, but the person throwing the party was not going to stop.

“He has no respect, he’s not even Hawaiian!” The man told us, and then he asked us how long we had been on Maui. Three weeks. We are not Hawaiian either. He said that it was dark, we had never been on his road before, and he was worried that we would wander onto his family’s land (His whole family lived there, he told us) and “mess up their quality of life.” He said that we would have to go back and that, if we saw the person throwing the party (who, of course, we did not actually know), we should tell him that he’ll call the cops if he keeps sending people up the road. One of the four of us was angry at this man, but the others quietly apologized and turned back, the angry one in tow. I didn’t know anything about where we were going, what the relations between that person and his neighbors were or anything like that. But I did know — not from school or the newspaper, or from conversations with other people on Maui, but from books in the libraries — that non-Natives have caused a lot of damage to Native people in Hawai’i and that I didn’t want to represent that or perpetuate that. I had just finished reading a non-biased account of the colonization and annexation of Hawai’i, and I was about to read a collection of essays by a Native woman named Huanani Kay-Trask. In one of Kay-Trask’s essays about tourism, she writes, “If you are thinking of visiting my homeland, please don’t. We don’t want or need any more tourists, and we certainly don’t like them. If you want to help our cause, pass this message on to your friends.”

The things the man on the road said to us about “quality of life” and calling the police are examples of the ways in which Euramerican colonization has drastically changed life on Hawai’i. Hawaiians are left with no choice but to assimilate and work within the system imposed on them starting when James Cook made the islands common geographical knowledge to the rest of the world. With this came a lot of aggressive visitors and the introduction of many things: disease and poisons that the island’s inhabitants had previously not known or built immunities to, killing off over 90% of the Natives in the first 100 years of European contact; Capitalism–money and the idea of ownership, a lesson taught by the cession of Native land by foreigners for cashcrop plantations; Mass migration of people brought in to work on those plantations, since the Native population was declining so rapidly; weapons and the idea (or threat) of war; Christianity and the demonization and consequent banning of Hawaiian spiritual and cultural practices. The dispossession of Native land began with a dream of importing sugar cane and pineapples to the United States which continued through the 20th century as the military took over many areas, including the entire island of Kaho’olawe, and is still real today in the ever-expanding tourist industry. As things are now, there are something like 7 million tourists who visit Hawai’i each year, while the population of Hawai’i is around 1.2 million. The land continues to be encroached upon by outside interests which destroy endangered plant and animal species through destroying their habitat. These species are further endangered by the introduction of invasive species. There are entire towns dedicated to resorts, elaborate second — or third — homes stand vacant 10 months out of the year while folks are arrested for sleeping on the beaches their families have slept on for generations. Elaborate cruise ships dock beside endless shopping centers a few miles away, and there are plans in place to expand some of the airports.

When thinking about Hawai’i, even as an anarchist adult, I embarrassingly would recreate images the mass media had put in my mind, from the Brady Bunch to the Tiki Room at Disneyland: images of Native people practicing their culture the way they always had; Images of volcanoes, Hula dancers, legends, rituals. This is the image we are shown of Hawai’i as outsiders, or even as visiting tourists not venturing far from the resorts, and I had never challenged it. It was always peripheral, always untalked about. I had never read a political piece about the status of Hawai’i until I was there, searching the Hawaiiana section in the Makawao library. I felt ashamed and ignorant. My privilege had allowed me the comfort of never wondering how things got to be the way they are. In fact, I had never known how things are. The image of Hawaiian Natives as tribal primitives is so common even today, so fetishized, though forced into near extinction by those who present its iconography. Since just after Hawai’i’s annexation, tourism campaigns have relied heavily on the perpetuation of staged images of Natives as an unevolved people taking part in primitive practices that had actually been outlawed or otherwise altered by Euramerican invasion and acculturation. These images are typically of beautiful Native women posed as if they were dancing the Hula. The prevailing scientific racism of the period of Hawai’i’s annexation and early tourism used skull structure of different racial demographics to justify a peoples’ mistreatment by Europeans, stating that no race was evolved as the anglo-teutonics. “Scientists” of the time asserted that Hawaiians were closer to caucasian blood than that of any other “lesser” race. Thus not seen as lesser by race, Native Hawaiians could be seen as lesser by practice if the illusion of their primitivism alongside modern society could be withheld. The allure of standing in the sand watching a foreign person practice an archaic ritual while knowing that the next day you could put your shoes back on and take a plane back to your color television was a sure hit.

When I got there, I wondered where that Hawaiian culture that tempts tourists all over to visit was. I didn’t see it or hear it until I was soaking in a hotel hot tub I’d snuck into with my mainland friends. It was all around me there, a script performed by actors for the pleasure of elite dining tourists. But the culture I experienced elsewhere on Maui was that of entitled white neo-bohemians: The surfer bra, the burner, the mid-life crisis purger, the raw foodist who can afford it, the voluntarily impoverished. And they were all so happy; they were all so calm; nothing was wrong. Since these were the people I was meeting and interacting with the most, I started talking with them about the acculturation of the people Indigenous to their chosen home or vacation destination. Across the board, none of these people thought anything was wrong. “This is tropical paradise.” “There’s nothing we can do about it. Leaving won’t help anything.” “I totally have a Native friend.” “Maui has a plastic bag ban, what else could you possibly ask for?” “The colonization was actually a good thing because it helped them defend themselves from other colonizers.” And — this is the one I heard the most — “It depends what our intentions are.” If we don’t intend to silence a culture by increasing the number of outsiders whose very presence is a reminder of that culture’s silencing, then we won’t actually do that, will we? Who do these people think they are kidding?

These people are living the good life and don’t want politics to get in their way. They don’t want to think about how living in Hawai’i is good for them but is not always so good for the people who have a real connection to the land. One of the few people who was not a foreigner I got a ride with was a woman going to visit her father in the hospital. She must have had ten rosaries hanging from her rear view mirror. On her dashboard were pocket-sized pictures of her darling children, so she would always see them as she drove. I was hitch hiking with a woman I’d just met who had been living in Haiku for a few months. The two of us were happily unemployed, but for the woman giving us a ride, unemployment would mean not being able to provide for her sick father or three children. She told us that she had left Maui once, but had never left Hawai’i, not because she was in a tropical paradise and had no desire to visit other places, but because she never had the opportunity. She smiled at us and quickly closed her mouth, insecure about her missing teeth, a reminder of an abusive relationship. She was one of the kindest, most sincere people I have ever met. And she didn’t say “aloha” to us.

Few of the Native Hawaiians I met spoke Hawaiian to tourists. The times I encountered overly used words like “aloha” and “mahalo,” they were coming from white mainland tourists or transplants, or were printed on receipts in the mall trash cans. These are people and situations incapable of understanding what the words mean. Cultural assimilation cannot be reversed like that. Euramericans came to Hawai’i and forced the people of the islands into Christianity and capitalism. And now Euramericans are going to Hawai’i and willingly choosing to adopt a slaughtered language and what whisper of revived lifestyle they please; setting things that don’t suit them aside, incorporating their own favorites from the cultures of others. This entitled imitation is called cultural appropriation and it is insulting to people oppressed whose lives and beliefs have been forcibly changed.

The time I spent on the island of Maui was so peaceful, so healing, so good for me in so many ways. And I will not go back. If I’d known then what I learned during that trip, I would have never gone in the first place.

Recommended reading:

From a Native Daughter, Huanani Kay-Trask

Hawai’i’s Story by Hawai’i’s Queen, Queen Liliuokalani

Aloha Betrayed, Noenoe K. Silva

The Blount Report, James Blount

“Picturing Hawai’i: The ‘Ideal’ Native and the Origins of Tourism, Jane C. Desmond

Cultural Appreciation of Cultural Appropriation?, zine available on zinelibrary.info

As soon as I heard the slogan, “The 99% against the 1%,” I knew any hope that the Occupy movement would affect real change was over because very few Americans qualify as members of the 99% so far as the world is concerned. This liberal platitude was quickly followed-up by demands for reforms and a deluge of pseudo-Occupy organizations, such as “Occupy for Jobs,” ad nauseum, in a sickeningly rapid co-optation of the Occupy movement into a fight for more jobs, more commodities, more of our “fair” share of the loot stolen from the rest of the world’s peoples. Proving, once again, that feigned ignorance of other human beings’ impoverishment is simply a ploy to abet a greedy and self-serving agenda. Occupy, schmoccupy!

We’ve all heard the excuses coming from the so-called “middle class” in America: “I’m only one person. I have a family to take care of. I need to look to my own survival. what can I do?” I’ve heard it from my parents and peers for years. Selfishness couched in the terms of apathy and despair, with the despair stemming from the realization that they’re really just members of the working class after all. A class that’s rapidly losing its economic footing after being thrown into the global competition for low wage jobs by the transnational corporations’ quest to squeeze more capital, and more money, out of labor. Too many people, like the American working class, are willing to place their foot on another’s neck in order to get a leg up. Competition is the bane of the working class and exactly why all movements towards real worldwide economic equity are so easily derailed. All the people with the bulk of the loot have to do is throw some of it around and, “voila!”, the majority is down on its knees picking up the coins.

Of course, we’ve seen this all before. A few bones are thrown to the workers in order to gain their acquiescence in the corporate raging and pillaging of the planet at the expense of everyone else – the status quo! This was FDR’s much-vaunted New Deal. A “deal” never intended to be permanent. It was merely a temporary shelter designed by liberals so that the thieves known as capitalists, or the Scum-in-Charge (SICK), could weather the working class storms sweeping the country and the world at the time. Never mind that the workers created all the wealth and the rich merely expropriated it through financial manipulations as obvious as the three-card monte.

Once the storm clouds cleared, the capitalists proceeded to co-opt and buy-off the workers’ leaders via the rewards of trade union leadership and partial control of pension funds. An easy enough task because, with a few extra bucks in their pockets and the illusion of job security and pensions, most workers went contentedly back to being wage slaves. “Two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot” for the workers and the driver’s seat for the SICK, who immediately set about taking those “few bones” back.

This will happen every time if, when we gain the upper hand, we allow the capitalists, who don’t work except at stealing from us, to continue to amass and control capital or money. Nothing will ever change. Not in America, not in Tunisia, Greece or Spain, all the Occupiers and Indignados, notwithstanding. This is the status quo, the SICKness, again, being proven-out, as the people initially in power remain in power in all the aforementioned countries, with their power, ultimately, devolving from international finance capital. Nothing will change, that is, until the working class starts throwing stockbrokers and bankers out of Wall Street windows and Egyptian generals into the Nile with crocodiles, and takes back the fruits of its stolen labor. Strong medicine, indeed, but the only cure for the SICKness!

If anyone thinks that the kleptocracy that runs the planet is going to allow an equitable division of its resources, aided and abetted by participatory democracy, then they should just shoot themselves in the head, as they’ve got one bullet rattling around in there already. One need look no further than how quickly and easily the capitalists evicted the Occupy movement from the territory it had occupied to see who’s running the show. Why so quick and easy? Because a life and death struggle was not fought as one, with most of the well-fed and coddled Occupiers — no matter now well-intentioned — having no stomach for a fight that didn’t concern their appetites!

No doubt, it’s a life and death struggle for the 22,000 children who die every day from starvation and malnutrition on this planet. Yet, nothing is done about it. And it’s only going to get worse with giant transnational corporations gaining more and more control over arable farmland and fresh water sources (when they aren’t polluting them!) Moreover, the planet is suffering from severe weather fluctuations due to global warming, as evidenced by the rapid melting of polar icecaps and glaciers, resulting in unseasonable droughts and floods that effect the undeveloped countries the most. The fact that the corporate oil-based economy is responsible for this is rarely pointed out and, again, nothing is being done about it. For example, I suspect most of the Occupiers own cars and used them to get to the various Occupy sites, with the possible exception of Occupy Wall Street [Ed. Note: and Occupy Oakland, where bicyclists ruled!!].

So long as they get a cut, and don’t have to think about the consequences too much, most people in the so-called industrialized democracies of the West and Japan are fine with ignoring the deaths of these children and the widespread destruction of the planet for corporate profits. They’ve found it to their benefit to go along with the SICKness. As such, they’ve no problem with their leaders’ innumerable, unending and undeclared wars for markets and resources. No problem with a president who orders torture or one who orders extra-judicial murders, including the assassinations of American citizens. No problem with predator drones bombing villages and NATO, American and other soldiers murdering men, women and children under the banner of the SICKness.

In fact, if Occupy has shown us anything, it’s that the only problem most Americans have is when their extremely high-paying jobs, relative to the rest of the world’s, seem to be going away. So long as most American workers continue to buy into the “American Dream” and blindly accept the control of billions of dollars by thieves like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and the Walton family as part of that dream, then human life, if not the planet itself, is doomed. No doubt, Americans, as a people, are down with the SICKness!
Write the author at Rand Gould C-187131, Thumb Correctional Facility, 3225 John Conley Dr. Lapeer, MI 48446.

I have not driven a car in over ten years. This has been difficult as I was brought up in a car-worshipping society. While some people had photos of cars on the walls of their room, I opted for glam metal boys with long hair and makeup, completely vehicle-free. From the time I was a child, I was engulfed in apprehension of cars, from crossing the street in the suburbs to being a passenger.

Although I wanted to achieve the maturity and independence I imagined driving a car would bring me, the stress of being behind the wheel of a metal box that runs on gas felt unnatural. I was often nervous in the few years I drove. There was the fear of hurting others or mis-communicating with other drivers on the road; often the fear of not making it to where I needed to be on time. It was difficult to be present given all the stimuli and “power” I had simply by the pressure of my foot on the pedal.

Rushing from place to place seems to be commonplace. After living in New York City for nine years (where thankfully it was easy to be car-less) I found the constant busyness to be draining. How many people have been injured or killed simply because others behind the wheel were rushing to get to or from work? This saddens me given that so many people don’t even find their jobs fulfilling. In a race to support ourselves, we end up hurting others before even getting to the office.

I’ve been able to make it where I needed to go via bike, public transportation, hitchhiking or finding folks who were already heading the same way. While this might not be an option for everyone, beginning to bike — or simply biking more has made my life that much better, healthier, less stressful and I encourage all who are able to do the same. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, even biking one way or one day a week can help. And just as with anything else, the more practice you have the more confident you will become.

At around eight years old I began bicycling with a friend of mine, Miriam, in the Chicago suburbs. It was wonderful to have the independence — to choose when and where we could go and explore. But then I moved and outgrew my childhood bike and I stopped bicycling.

It wasn’t until 2009, roughly twenty years after I’d began to bike that I resumed bicycling in New York after my friend, Tom, who had a knack for finding abandoned bikes, encouraged me start up again. I was terrified, of course. It’s a very fast city, sidewalks, streets, buildings, non-stop motion, frequent crowds. There are a lot of people, and an overwhelming intensity is a permanent resident of the city; it’s in the air. I wouldn’t say people in New York are mean, just frequently in a hurry, which is often interpreted as being unkind.

While many people bike in New York, it still wasn’t ideal. The bike lanes were few and far between. I remember being excited to find them, though often they were filled with potholes and occasionally oblivious pedestrians. Sometimes they would be blocked by taxis or the triple threat of bike lane blocking police on horses (gross & infuriating for multiple reasons), but it still became the quickest, most affordable way to get around.

Months before I started biking in NY I pictured myself arriving at a theater I frequented via bike. Perhaps it’s how some people see themselves in fantasies of arriving on the red carpet — getting out of a limo. My fantasy was simply to arrive outside an improv theater on a bicycle. Maybe I should have aimed higher. But when I started bicycling, every time I pulled up on my bike I felt magical for doing something I was afraid of and becoming the person I wanted to be.

As a child of the 80’s, I was brainwashed into thinking I had to live a certain way and depend on those in “power” for my well-being. I was taught I had to look and be a certain way to be acceptable. This was tied into giving money to corporations.

But I’ve learned that the products they are selling won’t bring me joy. If someone gave me a brand new car, I wouldn’t drive it because it wouldn’t make me into the attractive actor from all the commercials wearing fancy clothes and landing the woman of my dreams. I’m more into dudes at this juncture and one does not need a fucking car to be attractive. If I were behind the wheel I would still be nervous and thinking to myself, “what the fuck am I doing driving this SUV? And where is my bike??” But as much as I try to avoid advertisements, they find their way to me. The message is clear; Conform, conform, conform.

One reason bicycling is still looked at in many places as merely an “alternative” is because there is less profit to be made. Sure, there are the overpriced high end bike stores that are more concerned with making money than getting more people to safely bike — and they can go fuck themselves — yet there is not the weekly trip to the gas station, the insurance, the smog checks.

I think of how many people whose lives have been lost because greedy people want to make money by selling oil. Just because we don’t see the violence firsthand, doesn’t mean it’s not connected.

Imagine if even 10% of the cars were off the road what kind of a change we would see. Hitchhiking and ridesharing, especially with the advancement of social networking, should be commonplace. Spend an hour on the freeway and see how many cars with extra seats pass you by. I did! It sucked. Folks did stop, but they were in the minority. Humans have more than enough to share, yet everyone has their private metal boxes. So many people are going the same direction, yet separately.

I understand wanting alone time, I understand fear of others, yet look at what this fear of change and lack of trust amounts to — the unnecessary heartbreaking pollution of our fierce planet. And one of my favorite sayings every time you complain about being in traffic is to remember that you ARE traffic.

This is not a car vs. bike argument, because there is no need — obviously bikes win. This is more a call for those of us on two wheels to remember it is worth it, despite aggressive drivers, getting doored, unfriendly bike and subway compatibility and lack of bike lanes compared to cars. How about a freeway for bikes? One can bike down the side of the Highway 101 – why not allow this elsewhere? Minneapolis had something like this and it was great. Copenhagen is building one, too.

There is enough antagonism out there. The more bicyclists there are on the road the more confident we can become. Simply because cars rule the road and are larger and louder (and smellier) does not mean bicycles deserve less room and less safety.

As my friend Nogga told me, as I struggled to follow him weaving in and out of car traffic on DeKalb, a busy street in downtown Brooklyn, “You have to be aggressive. You have every right to be here.” True on a bike, as well as other situations. Everyone has a right to be here, even those without the ability, financial or otherwise, to be behind a wheel.

Finally, this is a call for those who are scared or don’t know how to ride. I was once there, too. I look forward to riding alongside you wherever and whenever that may be.

The motivation of this article was obliterated on the night we were proof reading for a project due the next day. This article — observing the phenomenon of radicals using the prefix “cis,” was in the back of my mind for weeks. The central point I wished to make is that I only hear people using the term in a derogatory, angry manner, as a sneer, a put down. But when I off-handedly mentioned this analysis to a good friend who was helping proofread, I was given another perspective. “My housemates use the word all the time and it’s more clinical — detached”. That’s good I thought, now I don’t have to write an embarrassing rant.

I’ve primarily encountered cis as a prefix placed before the noun ‘man’, or ‘men’, often paired with the adjective ‘white’ and it seems to connote “straight” as in vanilla, man & wife…heterosexual? The underlying meaning depends on the person using the word. My friend the other night described its function as a counter attack “so that trans is not considered the other.” Trans-Gendered brave hearts have multiplied in the last 40 years and their actions rally us all to challenge the pressures to disappear and accept 2nd class citizenship. My first experience hearing cis in a derogatory manner just so happened to be from someone at odds with some of the community who was getting kicked out of a local house and left a turd on the floor of their former room. Since then I’ve questioned the word, and wondered about the intent behind it.

A fundamental question that motivates me to write this is ‘what kind of world are radicals making in the process of working to achieve a goal?’ A big part of creating new worlds is language, for language informs perception. I think words are great. I like listening to people talk and sing, passionately discuss issues and make indescribable noises. I go to meetings, I dig the collage of noise at cafes, I get mesmerized by radio talk shows as well as underground musicians. I think words hold more value than money. Early on in life while playing in the streets of Berkeley I heard my first slang word — or at least one that wasn’t going to be taught in a classroom anytime soon. A kid said something was “Icy,” and I had to stop what I was doing and decipher it. It was the early 1980’s and I could relate that it had something to do with cool and fresh, except done with more style. Icy wasn’t likely to be a banner on some cheaply made product. It lived on the streets.

Also common since the 80’s is the rise of techno corporate babble that is useful for international trade. Mostly names for products of dubious worth, they represent the fact that common day to day words were eaten up by patents. People couldn’t name their garbage after a familiar mythological character or something in the natural world anymore, so instead a hybrid word would be used. I’m thinking of all sorts of alien words used to sell shit like pharmaceuticals, computer software and hardware, car insurance and the like. Words that just reek of corporate board rooms. For me, cis had a similar feel.

Well I guess looking at the word without looking it up, it could be “SIS” as in “sis-ter-man,” that doesn’t seem so bad to me. I like the incongruent mixings of that and the disorientating of every day norms. But cis comes out of the mouth something like a snake sound — or someone booing an unpleasant speaker. The first time I heard the word, the way it was used, it reminded me the feeling I had when I first heard “HPV,” a word noting a new sexually transmitted disease. In some ways cis resembles HPV, for both words imply something you don’t want to catch. Nor does it seem to be something people can get rid of. You are a straight male indoctrinated by capitalism, and you will die that way.

Radicals have a history of bringing soul and togetherness with their new words. Sure some hate speech is invented and used. But radicals generally use words and ideas that encourage pluralism. Think of a rainbow. They tend to encourage people to identify with others across boundaries.

A part of me could have started this article with an investigation; drawn up a list of intelligent people I know sharp on trans issues and throw them a couple of questions about cis. At the very least you would think I could do is troll around on the internet looking for definitions and people’s opinions and insights. But by not going that route there is also a purity of direct experience. I simply encounter people use “cis-men” in a derogatory vein. Usually it’s after a frustrating experience and the cis-man is judged a problem by labeling him as such. I wonder, sometimes, if they know the meaning of the word as they say it. It strikes me to be similar to another word — “hipster,” which is also used in an abusive manner very different from its origin describing jazz aficionados in the 40’s. The sneer of being called a “hipster” is pretty interesting. What is a hipster these days? Generally it seems to be someone who is young and dressed with noticeable style. It is the common parlance of people who are also confused to be hipsters themselves. What I think it says really is that the Hipster is a person who is not likeable. Cis then is the new thing to scrape off your shoe.

I most often hear it as “cis white man.” The rhythm of that could be a form of casting a spell — the sticking of needles into a doll. But what I’d like to raise is that these are assumptions. Is the person really white…hetero…male? And only that? Did your experience allow you to ask them to define themselves? Scruffy Frank rudely hitting on you at the party just might be a FTM transguy who is of mixed Irish and Navaho stock. His actions may be shitty, but why should radicals do the border checking of identity politics?

If I may mention as an aside, I think there is some discrepancy in labeling people white. Just what does it mean to be white in the “West”? One analysis is that white is all about assimilation. Distinctions of people’s ancestors are set aside for membership in the great white hope. In losing cultural distinctions one is more easily controlled. There is a difference between European people you know, be it Finnish or Spanish. The white question spirals out and ruins the harmony worldwide. Plenty of people get put down for being “of color” and having a “white” inside. Many communities of color also berate people for looking too white. It’s a kind of insanity that desperately needs a dissent. If a person sucks let’s find a more imaginative put down, that is, if we choose not to understand them.

Cis white man can be another category to shelve people in this consumeristic culture. In this light I can see radicals using cis as a put down — as another adopted tool of alienation. My friend and her community use it descriptively, but everyone else I encounter teems with frustration and righteous anger as the word erupts from their lips. So much in our environment allows us not to see how we are complicit in creating oppression.

For the people angry at the insensitivity of people perceived to be White, Male, and Heterosexual, allow me to suggest reading Shere Hite’s work. Her Hite Reports from the mid 70’s are pretty common in free boxes and used bookshelves. But even more worth searching out is her synthesis work called Women as Revolutionary Agents for Change. In it, her research leads to the conclusion that male roles and privileges not only hurt women, but men as well. In the act of keeping up the fronts and expectations of gender roles, there is a psychological price to pay — just like how soldiers who terrorize, harm and murder people start to crumble and disintegrate inside. I feel the work of queer and trans activists is awesome. It’s empowering to give people more options in how to identify. Its just that these categories we create can also be a slippery path and new words can go to building a new prison. Please consider this as one person’s attempt to figure these things out no matter how indelicately. I look forward to seeing responses and other attempts discussed in a paper like this.

I first heard the term cis six years ago from trans friends and have identified as a queer cisman since that time. Cis or cisgendered describes people who are not transgendered, who still identify, more or less, with the gender they were assigned at birth. It comes from the Latin word ‘cis’ which means ‘on the near side of’ and is the opposite of the Latin word ‘trans’ which means ‘across’ or ‘on the far side of’. So, for example, the piece of land on the far side of the Romanian forest was called Transylvania (sylvan means woods) and the piece of ancient Gaul that was on the near side of the Alps (relative to Rome) was called Cisalpine Gaul.

Having a word that specifies people who are not trans in a way that does not also imply normalcy or authenticity (as options like ‘regular man’ or ‘bio-woman’ do) works to strip the language of some of its implicit biases and allows more generic terms like ‘man’ and ‘woman’ to be understood as trans inclusive (even if they don’t include everyone in the genderqueer middle of the gender spectrum). I also really appreciate having a way to identify my gender that is true to my experience and also signals my awareness of non-cisgender experience.

There have been people in Springfield Missouri who have wanted to start a local Food Not Bombs chapter for years and it just never materialized; J. was active at Occupy Oakland and made his way back to the Midwest with his friend C. They have been working to make Springfield FNB happen.
Hey J.!

Howdy! Springfield Food Not Bombs first feeding will be on Sunday! We planned it to be small since we are just starting out. We are making food for about 20 or so people. Tonight we have a meeting for a group of us (very small group) that are looking to start a Food Not Bombs.
How are you getting food and stuff?

That is what we are trying to figure out. Dumpstering is not really an option here. We saw an alternative in Reno, they hit food banks and used that. Then, there are some people who worked with some local health food place and other businesses to get some food donated for various actions so that is an avenue to check out as well. I am pretty excited [about starting a Food Not Bombs] and C. is even more so. We found some people who have been wanting to do it but never did. It’s not Oakland, but we are trying to bring some of that spirit here.
Given the way that feeding people overlaps with the mission of mainstream charities, what do you feel you are accomplishing by organizing a Food Not Bombs? I work with Food Not Bombs in the East Bay and this question comes up often.

Well here the homeless services are pretty limited. There is only one consistent night meal provided here and the place that does it, The Victory Mission, requires anyone who wishes to eat to sit through a sermon. If you are late they lock the doors and if you leave during the sermon, you don’t eat.
Starve in the name of Jesus, hallelujah!

When I was there the guy in charge told everyone to make sure to use the bathroom before chapel because if we left for any reason, we couldn’t eat.

To me that is absolutely ridiculous; that they will hold the ability to eat over people’s heads like that!
Tell me a little more about Springfield?

There is no real anarchist community here. There are a few anarchists that I have met, but they don’t really talk about it or do anything because it wouldn’t be accepted here. I am hoping that by organizing a Food Not Bombs that we can bring some of these people together and show them that although we are a minority, especially in this area of the country, we do exist.
What is the population like there?

A couple hundred thousand maybe, it’s the biggest city in this part of Missouri. There is a small group of us who want to start handing out anarchist literature. We are collecting various pamphlets and what-not. We want to start an anarchist community center. They had one here a few years ago but it didn’t last very long. We are thinking if we find a building with a room or two we could, as a group, rent the building and the rent for the rooms could help pay for the info-shop. Rent here is pretty cheap, so we may be able to pull it off.

Later that week…
Hey J., How did things go?

Hey! We did the first Food Not Bombs event tonight! Went better than I thought it would. Fed around 40. There were a few who came at the end and we ran out of food. It was interesting because most of the people here weren’t familiar with Food Not Bombs and were surprised by the lack of a sermon and more relaxed environment. It was fun. We are going to go over it tomorrow at the meeting and figure out how to make it better and be better prepared.

http://www.foodnotbombs.net/
http://www.ebfnb.org/