Category: Organizer Essays

Here’s some info on keeping chickens safe and healthy!

>>You can get chickens from a hatchery in your area, search the Internet or check the phone book. If there is a factory farm nearby, toy can check on rescue birds, or just ask.

>>Chickens Kay according to the number of light hours per day. More light (Summer) = more eggs: up to 1/day. In Winter, they lay fewer eggs, and sometimes not at all. Some people put a light in the coop to keep them laying, while others think that’s cruel, average lay is 2 to 3 eggs every 3 days.

>>Chickens need fresh water every day and chicken food that you can buy from the feed store. You can also feed them grains and veggies.

>>They love snails! They also love leftover veggies– Food Not Bombs is their best friend.

>>They love to come out and scratch around for bugs, but will destroy your garden– or be your chicken tractor, if you use a movable coop in early Spring.

>>Chickenshit is great for compost.

>>Raccoons and dogs think that chickens are tasty, so make a coop you can lock at night. Some people raccoon-proof the entire pen, in case they forget to lock up. Raccoon proofing means buying fencing 6″ deep (maybe extending it 6″ underground), covering the top, and constructing a tight gate.

>>Before you set all this up, check on local noise ordinance and zoning laws.

>>Roosters are loud! (And they’re loud, too). It is a myth that a rooster is necessary for hens to lay eggs, so to save your neighborhood some trouble, just keep hens.

>>Hens make noise, especially while laying, but most people won’t be bothered– still, ask neighbors first and give them some eggs.

 

Sometimes revolution seems impossible. Focus on one thing and another fucked you thing happens. You go to a meeting advertised on a cool flyer but everybody there is weird and seems smarter than you. After a beautiful sunset, you ride your bike down to check a possible action target, but you end up running into your friend flipping out on drugs.

But even when everything seems insurmountable, there are targets within reach. Because the web of oppression is so complex, there is good work that can be done anywhere, on any scale: self-work, work with our families and friends, dismantling oppressive systems and rebuilding interpersonal relationships and physical infrastructure.

Revolution is a mindset, a way of approaching the world. It’s much more that the products of our work— the Food Not Bombs, the anarchist newspapers, demonstrations, covert actions, “living for free,” the shows and zines and reading groups. All these trapping of the “anarchist” life frequently happen in completely unrevolutionary, boring, fucked-up ways. It matters very much that all these things do happen, but it matters equally how they happen, how we relate to and care for the people we work with, including our own selves. Revolution is not a bundle of accomplishments, but a process. We can’t just run with a few black blocs and call it a day— we have to do the work of destroying and creating within a context that helps us feel fulfilled and happy now instead of exhausted and burnt.

The war we’re waging on the outside also has a front within our own hearts and minds. Sometimes the inner struggle takes more bravery than facing a line of riot cops— rooting out oppressive programming, deciphering and responding to our own needs, even when they are against the grain of the fast-paced activist life. Resting is subversive.

We can’t “get it all done,” because revolution won’t ever be finished. Nature, and therefore humanity, and therefore the system of states and hierarchy, has been changing since the beginning of time. There was not some primordial, Garden of Eden-esque state if radical perfection, from which we all fell into this pit of hierarchy and oppression, and which we might attain again someday if we open the right number of infoshops. Natural life is a process of growth and decay, and someday the United States Empire will fall, just like the other empires have come and gone. We are here now, and we have to actualize revolution now. We have to manage the change, exploiting the cracks in the state apparatus as it settles, ages, and falls apart, while strengthening our own lives and relationships against the unfriendly decay of burnout and self-destruction. Ultimately, our relationships with other people are the framework of a new world built of hope, trust, and love. This is our strongest revolutionary tool.

 

Welcome to the first-ever spiral bound version of the Slingshot Organizer! The world we’re struggling for is one in which every individual has a chance to be fully human and free— not tied down by oppressive societal structures or cultural prejudices. It involves people living for experience, beauty, and pleasure— not just owning things. We refuse to settle for a beige world of conformity— we want color and difference everywhere like a million rocks on the beach, each one unique, with the state dishing out more fear, more war, and more repression, it’s up to us to powerfully articulate what we’re for, and then start building it! We can’t afford to get bogged down in what we’re against.

Publishing this is a really intense experience that always helps us focus on the complex connections between our activism and our personal lives. It’s amazing how working this hard can make us feel so close to each other and help us endure the personal trials we all face. As we move through our lives, we’re constantly reminded of how short and precious they are and how much we need each other. Loving and taking care of each other is the definition of community, building powerful communities is necessary to struggle against corporations and the state, but it is also a goal in and of itself because it makes our lives meaningful and worth living. So many radicals suffer from burnout because activism becomes a chore— a duty like work. If we’re serious about holding a new society, activism has to be about our love for our comrades and our love for what we’re doing.

This large-print version of the organizer is an experiment for our collective. For years, the most frequent complaint we’ve heard about the Slingshot pocket-sized organizer is that there’s no space to write. So here’s a larger size for those of you who need more space— whether it’s because your life is crammed with excitement and project or just because you like to write BIG! Let us know if we should do a spiral-bound book for 2006. We tried really hard to make up a great name for this project, but after a few weeks of thinking of absurd names like “the Log,” “the Time-table,” “the Arouser,” and “the Transmorgrifier,” we gave up. If you think of a really good name, send it to us and if we use it, we’ll send you an excellent prize.

This is the 11th year we’ve created the Organizer to inspire ourselves and you to build a better world. It also raises funds to publish the quarterly, radical, independent Slingshot Newspaper. We try to distribute the newspaper for free anywhere in the USA. Contact us to become a local distributor. Thanks to the people who made this year’s Organizer: Artnoose, Bekey, Crow, Crystal, Eggplant, Holi, Jenn, John, Kat, Laura, Leticia, Lew, Lexi, Molly, Monica, Moraya, Paseo, PB, Rachel, Tomás, and Xarick.

 

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Food Not Bombs projects gather, cook and serve free vegan food to everyone who wants to eat at public locations in an all-volunteer, non-hierarchical, collective and decentralized fashion. Preparing and eating together in public view builds community and goes way beyond typical free food programs. There are hundreds of FNB projects around the world from tiny ones that serve once a week to huge projects that serve every day. If your town or neighborhood doesn’t have one, here are some tips you and your friends can use to start one!

At the outset, starting a Food Not Bombs might seem like more than you can handle. Work on the basics, taking one step at a time. There is no need to feel pressure to accomplish everything all at once.

STEP 1: Talk to people you know who might be interested in working with you. Pick a meeting time, gather everyone who is interested, have a pot luck and talk about what you would like to do.

STEP 2: Make flyers announcing the existence of a local FNB to attract volunteers. Schedule regular meetings and make a phone/email list of participants.

STEP 3: Arrange for transportation. You may be able to borrow a vehicle from a sympathetic organization. East Bay FNB uses a bicycle trailer. Visualize coupling carbon free transport with post-capitalist food!

STEP 4: Begin looking for sources of food. Be creative. Many groups use a combination of dumpster diving, fundraising to buy some ingredients, and doing pickups of surplus food from food co-ops, farmers markets, health food stores and community gardens.

STEP 5: Some groups start by delivering bulk food to shelters, etc.. This can give you ideas about where and when to set-up a FNB table in public. Other groups skip this step — they already know a good place to serve and just start serving.

STEP 6: Developing a regular schedule of meals (certain days at a certain time) lets people know how to find you and allows volunteers to plug in more easily.

STEP 7: Some groups use people’s home kitchen or a donated church kitchen and some use propane stoves and cook right at the site.

STEP 8: The police have frequently used health codes or other laws to stop FNB groups from serving in public. You can seek support from local activists, lawyers etc. These struggles are a great way to expose a system that would rather throw food away than allow hungry people to eat.

FNB food is typically vegan — that is, no meat, dairy, or eggs. The economic and health benefits of a vegetarian diet are directly connected to a healthy attitude about ourselves, each other and the planet as a whole. To connect with the global FNB movement, check out www.foodnotbombs.net

 

Food Not Bombs projects gather, cook and serve free vegan food to everyone who wants to eat at public locations in an all-volunteer, non-hierarchical, collective and decentralized fashion. Preparing and eating together in public view builds community and goes way beyond typical free food programs. There are hundreds of FNB projects around the world from tiny ones that serve once a week to huge projects that serve every day. If your town or neighborhood doesn’t have one, here are some tips you and your friends can use to start one!

At the outset, starting a Food Not Bombs might seem like more than you can handle. Work on the basics, taking one step at a time. There is no need to feel pressure to accomplish everything all at once.

STEP 1: Talk to people you know who might be interested in working with you. Pick a meeting time, gather everyone who is interested, have a pot luck and talk about what you would like to do.

STEP 2: Make flyers announcing the existence of a local FNB to attract volunteers. Schedule regular meetings and make a phone/email list of participants.

STEP 3: Arrange for transportation. You may be able to borrow a vehicle from a sympathetic organization. East Bay FNB uses a bicycle trailer. Visualize coupling carbon free transport with post-capitalist food!

STEP 4: Begin looking for sources of food. Be creative. Many groups use a combination of dumpster diving, fundraising to buy some ingredients, and doing pickups of surplus food from food co-ops, farmers markets, health food stores and community gardens.

STEP 5: Some groups start by delivering bulk food to shelters, etc.. This can give you ideas about where and when to set-up a FNB table in public. Other groups skip this step — they already know a good place to serve and just start serving.

STEP 6: Developing a regular schedule of meals (certain days at a certain time) lets people know how to find you and allows volunteers to plug in more easily.

STEP 7: Some groups use people’s home kitchen or a donated church kitchen and some use propane stoves and cook right at the site.

STEP 8: The police have frequently used health codes or other laws to stop FNB groups from serving in public. You can seek support from local activists, lawyers etc. These struggles are a great way to expose a system that would rather throw food away than allow hungry people to eat.

FNB food is typically vegan — that is, no meat, dairy, or eggs. The economic and health benefits of a vegetarian diet are directly connected to a healthy attitude about ourselves, each other and the planet as a whole. To connect with the global FNB movement, check out www.foodnotbombs.net

Welcome to the 2009 Slingshot Organizer. Making a calendar is a contradictory thing for radicals because in many ways dividing up and selling off time is a key problem with this modern, capitalist, high-tech world. Clocks and calendars help give the illusion that you can find satisfaction and meaning sometime in the future if you accomplish some goal, buy a particular product, meet the right person, move to a better town, elect the right leader or invent some new device. These illusions keep everyone chasing their tails, thinking about the future, not noticing the present moment and the place we are now. Clocks and calendars allow those in power not only to own the land and machines, but to control the very hours in our days. Before calendars and clocks were invented, people understood time based on the natural cycles of sunrise and sunset, planting seeds and then gathering the harvest, birth and death. In these cycles, each moment has its own special character.

Maybe when you’re using this calendar to keep yourself organized, you can keep in the back of your mind that time and calendars are made up out of thin air by people. Since it is all arbitrary, you can take a few moments to notice what is going on before you rush off to the next thing. We’ve made every day in the calendar look different to remind ourselves how everyday is a new chance to really experience life and connect with those around us.

We hope the organizer is more than just a day planner or another consumer product and that it can be a small source of inspiration for liberation and change. We don’t make the organizer the way one works a job — focused on the pay-off. Instead, like slow food, we’ve cooked up the organizer inefficiently, using locally grown, organic ingredients — concentrating on the experience of the journey itself. We use outmoded and even absurd tools, not the latest computer gadgets: pens, typewriters, rub off letters, copy machines, bicycles, waxers, phonograph records. The art is from people who wandered in, not professional designers. We spent way more time discussing side-topics, laughing and looking into the future with grave concern than we did in front of a computer or rushing around in a car. We hope you’ll be able to taste the home cooking all year long.

This is the 15th year we’ve been privileged to publish the Organizer. It raises funds to publish the quarterly, radical, independent Slingshot Newspaper. We aim to distribute the newspaper for free everywhere in the US. Send us your mailing address to become a local distributor of Slingshot. Thanks to the people who made this year’s Organizer: Abra, Alex, Artnoose, Bonnie, Brescia, Clyde, Cara, Compost, Crystal Math, Devon, Dominique, Eggplant, Emily, Emily Kate, Fil, Gregg, Jess, Julia, Japhy, Joy, Jon, Kyle, Kelly, Kerry, Kermit, Lew, Melissa, Molly, Paseo, Paul, PB, Peaches, Rachel, Samantha, SarahTops, Sean, Taeva.

 

Slingshot Collective

3124 Shattuck Avenue • Berkeley, CA 94705 • 510 540-0751

slingshot@tao.ca • http://slingshot.tao.ca

© Anti-Copyright. Borrow whatever you want. We did.

 

Note on Moon dates: this year we changed the way we listed moons. This year we list the day on which a full moon or new moon occurs for Pacific Time. If you live in a time zone other than Pacific, the DAY of the event may be a different day. Pacific time is three hours later than Eastern Time.

 

printed on recycled paper

 

All volunteer collective — no bosses, no workers, no pay.

 

Slingshot Tip: to preserve your cover & binding, tape your cover with clear packing tape

 

printed on recycled paper

 

All volunteer collective — no bosses, no workers, no pay.

 

Slingshot Tip: to preserve your cover & binding, tape your cover with clear packing tape

 

printed on recycled paper

 

All volunteer collective — no bosses, no workers, no pay.

 

 

 

DIY Urban hunting and gathering

There are lots of ways to find and gather things you need to live so you don’t have to buy them:

Food and firewood Gathering

There are edible plants and fruit trees as well as fallen trees for firewood almost every place people live — from the urban core to suburbs to rural areas. Mostly, these food and fuel resources get ignored as merely “landscaping” because people don’t know they are there — people drive right by on their way to buy food or firewood at a supermarket. By gathering and cultivating food and fuel locally, you reduce the demand for fossil-fueled agriculture, connect to the earth, learn do-it-yourself skills, nurture community, and move away from being dependent on capitalism, work and money.

• The first step in gathering local food is learning the types of plants that grow in your area and noticing edible trees and plants. Check the library or local gardening organizations. For example, a lot of people have fruit trees in their yards that they don’t harvest. Other plants are in parks or along roads. During harvest season, walk around and make a map in your head or on paper of which trees and local plants seem to get harvested and which don’t.

• When you’ve located stuff to harvest, if it is on private land you can leave a note or knock on the door to see if you can harvest particular trees or plants. Sometimes you can offer to split the harvest with the resident. Other times, people in a house may be glad to avoid having messy, rotting un-harvested fruit end up on the ground. Talking to your neighbors is a great way to build community. If food plants are on public land, often you can just help yourself.

• After you harvest, the biggest challenge may be how to deal with tons of a particular food item all at once. Eating is season is way different from what modern people are use to. Setting up a free distribution system to give food away to your friends and neighbors helps build community and alternatives to market systems. Learning how to dry, can, freeze and cook your harvest can be a huge do-it-yourself adventure.

• When trees fall or are cut down in cities, they are mostly thrown away into landfills. How silly: all that wood “waste” is valuable fuel. You can collect wood waste, cut it up and split it, dry it for a year, and then burn it to keep warm.

Dumpster Diving

“The earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses” – Utah Phillips

 

Who are the corporations and individuals fueling endless war and ecological collapse? The ones who sat and planned to invade Iraq, roadless forests and New Orleans? Many groups are already organizing blockades, street protests, and stockholder meetings targeting these institutions of violence — conducting research to expose their deeds. Why not try an even more dangerous maneuver: talk to and try to understand the people working and living at the point of production and the people who surround them? Below is just a tiny fraction of the corporations and institutions that make up the machine. Are some based in your town? What can you do to expose their activities to public scrutiny? Better yet, can you make your own list of companies in your area?

 

PRIVATE MILITARY CONTRACTORS

 

Private military contractors, more frankly called mercenaries, provide personnel, security, logistics, and supplies for twenty-first century Western militaries lacking in public support. There are over 100,000 contractors in Iraq who play a substantial role in strategy, tactics, and policy.

BLACKWATER USA-P.O. Box 1029/MOYOCK, NC 27958/252.435.2488, 7,000 acres of land. Erik Prince, Owner. Gary Jackson, President. World’s largest private army, founded in 1997.

DYNCORP 1401 McKinney, Suite 2400/Houston, TX 77010/888.669.3920. President and CEO: Herbert Lanese. Dyncorp Mercenaries have been employed in Bolivia, Bosnia, Somalia, Angola, Haiti, Colombia, Kosovo and Kuwait.

MILITARY PROFESSIONAL RESOURCES INCORPORATED 1201 E Abingdon Dr Ste 425/Alexandria, VA 22314 – Alexandria, VA. Owner: Carl E. Vuono, president. Operating in Iraq and militarizing civilian police.

 

DEFENSE CONTRACTORS AND INVESTORS

 

The defense contractors provide the industrial backbone and financial capital that gives military industrial complex its power.

BECHTEL 50 Beale St/San Francisco, CA 94105/415-768-1234. San Francisco, CA. Riley P. Bechtel, CEO. Construction company involved in Iraq, oil and power plant operation, privatization of water resources, Los Alamos Laboratories and Lawrence Livermore Lab.

CARLYLE GROUP 1001 Pennsylvania Ave Nw/Washington, DC 20004/202-347-2626. Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., Chairman. Huge investment group with major defense and power investments, political clout, and Dunkin Donuts.

HALLIBURTON/KBR 1401 McKinney, Suite 2400/Houston, TX 77010/888-669-3920. DAVID LESAR, Chairman, President and C.E.O. With the Single-source Iraq war contract Halliburton was awarded, this petroleum and construction company is making billions.

ITT CORP. 4 West Red Oak Lane/White Plains, NY 10604/914-641-2000. Steven R. Loranger, Chairman, President and CEO. Involved in arms manufacture and export, and sponsored 1973 coup in Chile.

 

OIL COMPANIES

 

The anti-war movement has marched behind the banner No Blood for Oil since the Gulf War. As oil resources diminish the strategic value of petroleum will only increase, and the major oil companies will continue to drive foreign policy.

BP – St James’s Square/London, SW1Y 4PD/United Kingdom/Phone: 44 20 7496 4000. Tony Hayward, CEO. Former colonial British Plunderer, the sun never sets on B.P.’s oil extraction operations.

CHEVRON 6001 Bollinger Canyon Road/San Ramon, CA 94583/United States. Phone: 925-842-1000. CEO & Chairman David O’Reilley. “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas — reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to.” – 1998 quote from CEO Kenneth Derr.

EXXONMOBIL- 5959 Las Colinas Boulevard/Irving, TX 75039-2298/United States Phone: 972-444-1000. Rex Tillerson, CEO. Heavily funds global warming denial, supported Indonesian military in East Timor.

ROYAL DUTCH SHELL Carel van Bylandtlaan 30/The Hague, 2596 HR/Netherlands Phone: 31 70 377 1365. Jeroen van der Veer, CEO. Another former colonial monopoly, Royal Dutch Shell was directly involved in the 1995 execution of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and extracts the world’s oil reserves for profit at an alarming rate.

 

EDUCATION & RESEARCH

 

HERITAGE FOUNDATION 214 Massachusetts Ave NE/Washington DC 20002/202.546.4400. Edwin Fuelner, Jr., President. Think tank supported the Reagan Doctrine by funding Contras and anti-communist rebels in Angola and arguing for U.S. dominance in foreign policy.

PROJECT FOR NEW AMERICAN CENTURY William Kristol, Chairman. Non-profit educational organization committed to the proposition that American leadership is good for the world.

 

RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS

 

CHRISTIAN COALITION 499 S Capitol St Sw/Washington, DC 20003/ USA /Phone: (202) 479-6900. Pat Robertson, president. In 2003, Robertson called the Iraq War “a righteous cause out of the Bible.” Opposes abortion, gay rights, provides mass support pew by pew for the neoconservative elements of Republican Party.

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF EVANGELICALS 499 S Capitol St Sw/Washington, DC 20003/ USA /Phone: (202) 479-6900. Leith Anderson, President. Evangelical group that is backbone of Christian Right movement that leads to militarism and death, hard at work building a loyal Christian faction in U.S. military.

 

ECO-DESTROYERS

 

MONSANTO /800 North Lindbergh Boulevard/St. Lois, MO 63167/314-694-1000 Monsanto, formerly Dow Chemical, makers of Agent Orange, continue to pump out chemicals and endanger the food supply.

INTERNATIONAL PAPER/ 6400 Poplar Avenue/Memphis, TN 38197. John Faraci, CEO> Mindlessly pulping forests in the Southeast.

 

MEDIA COMPANIES

 

TIME-WARNER – Time Warner Inc./One Time Warner Center/New York, NY 10019 Phone: 212-484-8000. Richard D. Parsons, Chairman And C.E.O. CNN must bear responsibility for media that uncritically incorporates U.S. propaganda.

NEWS CORPORATION – 1211 Avenue of the Americas/ New York/New York 10036 New York, NY. Rupert Murdoch, CEO and Chairman. Infamous for taking a strong stance in support of jingoism at the expense of journalism.

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hmovement has marched behind the banner No Blood for Oil since the Gulf War. As oil resources diminish the strategic value of petroleum will only increase, and the major oil companies will continue to drive foreign policy.

BP – St James’s Square/London, SW1Y 4PD/United Kingdom/Phone: 44 20 7496 4000. Tony Hayward, CEO. Former colonial British Plunderer, the sun never sets on B.P.’s oil extraction operations.

 

Good sex, in our opinion, is an act of mutual aid. Every person, regardless of gender, is responsible for contributing to the well-being and pleasure of their partners and themselves. We must explore and know our own desires and learn to speak them. We must hear and respond to the desires of our partners (even if that means accepting refusal gracefully). This means finding the words to express how we like to be touched, spoken to, tied up, and cuddled. Fucking is any raunchy act, and all of it requires consent. Getting explicit permission, however vulnerable and scary it may seem, is a great turn-on. What better than knowing your partner really likes it when you touch them that way, talk in that voice, or use that prop? What is better than knowing you can ask for anything, and it will at least be considered respectfully? There is no way that we or our relationships can grow if we don’t find safe spaces in which to explore.

If you have never spoken during sex, or asked permission, or blurted out your desires, feel free to start small. Most people hear compliments well, and appreciate encouraging suggestions. However, it’s equally important to discover the boundaries of your comfort (often situational) and speak them as well. Starting off with a “this feels so good” or “I love it when you…” or “I’d like you to spend the night if you’re interested” is fantastically brave. If you’re not there, work on moaning—just get yourself vocal. Steady yourself for disappointment (and delight), and enjoy the benefits of good communication. You may find out a lover has fantasies they didn’t share or they may entrust you with a story of trauma that is a gift to know and share the burden of. Often, people’s boundaries are related to past experience, and creating a safer “right now” can help some people open up closed doors. Reading your partners’ nonverbal cues is equally important, as is verbally checking for consent about each different act in which you may engage. There is no implicit consent to touch someone’s genitals because you have kissed them, or to have intercourse because you’ve had oral sex. I once met a couple who’d been together for three years and had never said a word in bed. He didn’t know that she’d never come and she didn’t know how to ask for what she wanted! If your partner tenses up or cries or is unresponsive, it’s really important to stop, check in, and support what they need. Remember, all of us have triggers, and not everyone is capable of communicating when they are reliving trauma. Don’t restrain your partner unless it’s part of consensual play, and check in before you lock the door (this can be a subtle act of power). Be honest about any risk factors you bring, such as Sexually Transmitted Infections, whether you have unprotected sex with other people, and if you have allergies to glycerin or spermicide (in lube) or latex. Details make all the difference.

It’s also important that we take care of our community and help out our friends. Sometimes people are too hurt, distracted or intoxicated to be concerned with their well-being. At the very least, we should directly check in with them about what they want and expect, and possibly act to get them to a place of lower risk. It’s also important to confront people (in a supportive way) who act aggressively, because they may not understand that what they are doing is possibly assault. Rapists in prison admit to an average of 11 acts of assault before they are caught. They are either okay with what they are doing, or don’t believe there’s anything wrong with it. The reality is, it’s a habitual behavior. Better to find out and help before it’s a problem situation. Putting people in prison or exiling them from scenes will not stop sexual assault. We need to find ways to address the behavior without destroying the person.

While being so direct about sex is outside of most norms, it transforms sexual experiences. When we are sure that we agree with our partners about expectation and desire, there is no fear to distract us—only pleasure and humor. The most important part of speaking our desires is realizing they are ours to fulfill—not our partners’. It’s much less pressure to offer someone a choice (“Would you like to come home with me or would you rather hang out here?”) than a request (“Would you come home with me tonight?”). Too often it’s easier to say yes than to explain “Yes, I want to come home with you but I’m nervous because I haven’t been with anyone since…” If we allow for slow and comfortable intimacy, we are likely to experience it more fully and joyfully.

So, if you are often the initiator of your sexual experiences, experiment with patience and let someone else take the lead. Even if it means being alone more often, you may find you enjoy yourself more when you have partners. If you are less likely to initiate sex, think of ways you could safely ask for intimacy. Having the support of friends could make it easier to approach that really great someone.

It’s our responsibility to create new sexual expectations based on good communication that not only reduce the likelihood of sexual assault, but affirm that sex is normal and necessary. This begins with teaching children healthy ideas about their bodies and believing people when they share stories of sexual assault. Consider it turning on the lights. There are endless ways for us to end our internal oppression and explore healthy, better sex.

A call for a spontaneous universal uprising on Leap day

2008 is leap year — a fantastic opportunity to leap into something new. Are you gonna to use your extra day like you use so many other days — toiling away at your job to make the bosses richer? Using up more of the earth’s resources while the forests, the oceans, and free communities are being killed? Watching it all go on around you — an “information consumer” — feeling helpless to do anything to resist it?

Life is far too short to spend days, weeks, years just getting by — getting treated like an object. How much of your life do you really get to control? How often are you really fully alive and free?

If you wish things were different and dream about a better world, you’re not alone. Vast numbers of people from all walks of life realize that life as we know it isn’t satisfying our real needs and has to change. But hoping and dreaming isn’t enough.

Lots of people have developed and articulated ideas for how life could be transformed. We need to love each other, take care of each other, share and cooperate, live with the earth instead of destroying it, and embrace diversity, not hatred and violence. Social structures that promote power and inequality need to be dismantled, and arrangements that promote freedom and sustainability constructed in their place.

So if things are to change, how can each of us be part of creating these changes? Most people feel like they’re too isolated as individuals to really do much of anything effective against a massive, entrenched system. This collective feeling of individual helplessness and inertia is a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it isn’t real — it is just a collective illusion.

Those in charge encourage feelings of isolation, helplessness, and passivity in a million ways. They want everyone to individually conclude that nothing very big or important can change — that the big things have to be the way they are. They love cynicism, resignation, and isolation. They fear community and discussion about alternatives. But most of all, they fear action — the moment when individuals take matters into their own hands and stop just hoping for a better world.

Anyone and everyone can take action. Taking action means moving from wishing things would change to changing them — in your family, in your neighborhood, in your workplace, in your school . . . in your own mind. Change in your mind is the most accessible change and yet often the most difficult — we’re all embedded in deep patterns that hold us back from building change out in the world. We’ve learned to feel powerless and take for granted lots of fucked up power relations. Working on changing our internal mental state goes hand and hand with taking action to change the external world. As we take action in the real world, we help liberate the parts of our mind that hold us back. Each new action experience — creating change ourselves — helps open possibilities for even more action and change.

Action in the world can mean living differently yourself in a variety of ways — the way you relate to others, the way you communicate, the way you eat, the work you do, the transportation you use, etc. And it can mean organizing with others to build new ways of living — creating community gardens, cooperative houses, collective businesses, neighborhood councils, and revolutionary organizations. And action also means rising up to fight those who dominate power and try to prevent change — joining protests, sit-ins, riots and strikes. The historical dates in this organizer chronicle all the amazing ways people have taken action through the ages: non-violently and violently; on a local level and on a global level; alone and together, in every year, across every place on earth. When you take action, you are far from alone! The key is for each individual to make the leap from hopelessness to action in as many ways as they can in any particular moment.

This leap day — February 29 — imagine everyone who feels smothered living a mediocre life within the current insane system rising up to resist in whatever way they can. Take leap day off work and live life like it really mattered. Spend the day as a free and whole being. Maybe that means spending time alone, or maybe it means with friends, or with your whole block, or even the whole city. Maybe it means tearing down the forces that seek to crush your dreams and force you back to work on March 1. Maybe living free for a day means spending the day creating new structures, new ideas, new forms of cooperation, and a whole new reality which makes you happier and freer. You don’t have to wait for tomorrow, and you don’t have to ask anyone for permission. Leap for it!