Category: Organizer Essays

This organizer is a tiny part of a growing resistance — crouched in the shadows but poised to jump into the open unexpectedly, and soon. All around, you can see inclusive, heterogeneous, and fun alternatives to the violence and oppression inherent in the current crazy economic/political system that is destroying the earth’s ability to support life itself. The system seeks to control everything from the top down by selling individual isolation to destroy community. But people are coming together and creating so much do-it-yourself art, music, writing and so many independent alternatives — grassroots forms of expressions that the system can never absorb — that the old centers of power will become irrelevant. Acting, studying, and creating together and outside the system defies the velveeta world and the culture vultures.

The illusion of isolation can be swept away in a moment. Isn’t it better to take our knocks in the head together in the streets than to face the world alone and afraid? To spend all night listening to the fragile voice of rebel low-power FM while plotting liberation than to sit awake fretting — anticipating the nightmare of daily life when the alarm clock goes off? Why not take a walk through what’s left of the woods and the great cities, talk with the people you meet, eat a good meal with friends and see all the pain and pleasure in the world. When we wake up, smell the coffee, and open our eyes, we look forward to an exciting life filled with revolt, creativity and cooperation that will surprise and inspire us.

This is the 14th year we’ve been privileged to publish the Organizer. It raises funds to publish the bimonthly, 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: Aaron, Abigail, Abra, Alexis, Artnoose, Cara, ChelseaLuna, Crow, Crystal, Dia, Eggplant, Emily, Fil, Gregg, Hzl, Jess x 2, Julia, Kathryn, Kenneth, Kermit, Leah, Lew, Mary, Molly, Moxy, Paseo, PB, Rachel, Rubicil, Samantha, Sydney, Taeva, Tomás, Veta, Z!k.

Slingshot Collective

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

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

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

 

Note on Moon dates: we list the day on which a full moon or new moon occurs for Universal Time (UT) — if you live in the USA, the DAY of the event may be a different day. UT is 4 hours before eastern time and 7 hour before pacific 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

 

 

As we build new non-hierarchical projects, businesses, houses and institutions, efficient, clear and open group process can make our work a lot easier. Making decisions as a group shouldn’t have to mean sitting in endless disorganized, frustrating meetings or letting our groups be dominated by those with the loudest voices. Here are some tips on how to create effective, fun, cooperative structures for liberation.

Decision Making Process

• If possible, come to meetings having already thought about concrete things to say and discuss.

• Starting a meeting well sets the tone for what is to come. Make a clear agenda that everyone understands and agrees on. Select people to play roles at the meeting: a facilitator or co-facilitators, a time keeper, someone to take minutes, and maybe a stack-keeper and vibes watcher for bigger meetings. Go around the circle and have everyone introduce themselves and perhaps check-in with how they’re feeling to build a cohesive spirit for the meeting.

• Meetings are more fun when there’s food and drink served.

• It can be helpful to have a brainstorm to generate lots of ideas on a particular agenda item. Everyone throws out ideas and no one comments on them or discusses them at the time. They are written down and organized or discussed later.

• Sometimes people raise their hands to speak to a point. The facilitator or stack-keeper will call on people and keep their comments in order. Other times a “talking stick” gets passed around — only the person holding the stick can speak.

• Sometimes, it is nice to have a “go-round” so that everyone in the circle can speak to a point or say “pass.” That will give quieter people who might not raise their hand a chance to speak.

• During the meeting, after discussing a point on the agenda, one or several people can state specific proposals or counter-proposals for the group to act on. This avoids general discussion that doesn’t lead to a clear decision.

• When a meeting is having a hard time getting to a decision, it can be helpful to take a non-binding “straw poll” to get a sense of how people feel on an issue. It may be that most people already favor one course and a straw poll can move the meeting from discussion to reaching a decision.

• Many groups use consensus to reach a decision — the process of only making a decision when, after thorough discussion, everyone agrees to a proposal or agrees to stand aside and not block it. This can take longer because it requires discussion, hearing others and compromise but avoids a group splitting between winners and losers.

• At the end of the meeting, make sure the date is set for the next meeting. Doing a check-out to state how people thought the meeting went can help heal hard feelings that may have developed during the meeting. It also helps to have people repeat what they agreed to do at the meeting so everyone remembers who will do what later. Write up minutes and distribute them to the group.

Organizational Development

• Groups that grow slowly and organically — starting with small goals and letting the project expand with the group rather than biting off a huge task right from the start — tend to keep going rather than burning out. Avoid endless discussions of abstract structure before you’ve even done anything.

• Collectives work best when they stay pretty small — maybe the size of a band or at most a smaller chamber orchestra. If a project requires more people, several independent collectives can communicate and cooperate on it.

• Having an established welcoming ritual for new members will help the group seem open rather than a closed clique of friends.

• Some collectives are open to anyone who wants to join. Others are closed collectives — new members have to be invited to join by the existing group. Figure out which kind your group wants to be based on the goals and needs of the group. It is okay to decide who you want to work with — being closed can help deal with disruptive people. On the other hand, open groups can include new energy, people and diversity outside your personal friendship network.

• Finances should be open and not mixed with anyone’s personal money.

• Keep a binder with all the minutes of meetings to maintain history as membership changes.

• Avoid an in-group developing by posting meeting times if the group is an open collective.

The Official History of the World gets written by those in power. It functions to support the current power structure by making the way things are seem inevitable and natural — the result of the inexorable flow of time. If you only read Official History, you’ll feel isolated and powerless because you’re just a regular person working a shitty job and living in an anonymous neighborhood, not a great leader like the people in the history books. If you’re invisible — not really a part of history — a different kind of future may seem impossible.

We’ve created this organizer and filled it full of historical dates that aren’t part of the Official History. The dates in our calendar commemorate the generations of regular people just like you who got together with their neighbors and tried to build a different kind of world. People who resisted those in power. We see history not as a static, academic subject, but as an active process that we all participate in every day. At the end of each year, we look back and see what events we can add to our list of historical dates for the next year. We know its been a good year when we can add a whole lot of dates at the end.

Learning the history of resistance helps empower us to struggle today — to participate in the present and to create a different kind of future. It is easy to feel isolated and powerless until you realize that your actions now are connected with millions of people over the eons who all struggled against the same forces and for the same kinds of liberation. The diggers were creating community gardens in England 350 years ago and we’re still talking about them. The luddites were attacking technology 200 years ago, and modern luddites still are. There are countless other examples in this calendar.

History can help us understand our connections with the past and the complex relationships that add up to social change. History gives us perspective about how change happens. It can take a long time. Sometimes people can struggle their whole lives and never see change or liberation. Other times, people happen to live at precisely the right time to see massive shifts in power right before their eyes.

Those in history who struggled for freedom weren’t the end of the process and those of us alive now aren’t the first. We won’t be the last either. Change sometimes happens unexpectedly just when things look hopeless. If you’re feeling hopeless about the greenscare, the war on terror and George Bush, imagine how people felt during the redscare, the cold war or watching the rise of Stalin and Hitler.

Change happens because of a combination of tactics, movements, individuals and communities chipping away over generations, and change can happen all of a sudden because of a single brilliant action or individual. You never know when you go out to a demonstration whether it will be Seattle in 1999 or Tiennamen square in 1989.

The people listed in the organizer who made history were just like us. They got up, ate breakfast, took a shit and then walked out the door and did something that we still remember today long after they are dead. That’s the kind of opportunity each one of us is presented with every day when we wake up. Not everybody can wake up every morning and have the energy to go out and fight the system, but some days all of us can.

It’s sometimes easy to think that history is boring because we’re usually first exposed to history in school and the Official History of great, slave owning, white men is boring. When we think of history, we see our part of it right now — the way today’s present is tomorrow’s history, and the way today’s struggle becomes tomorrow’s future. Being an active, radical and vibrant part of the past, present and future is exciting.

Making your own hygiene products is an easy way to avoid supporting corporate petrochemical giants who test on animals and offer dubious, carcinogenic ingredients. It’s easy, cheaper, and helps you be more self-reliant.

Some recipes:

ALL PURPOSE CLEANER: especially useful for toilets, sinks, countertops

Sprinkle baking powder on the surface you want to clean.

Spray the powdered surface with a mixture of vinegar and lemon juice (there will be some fizzing).

Scrub with a rag or sponge and rinse.

GLASS CLEANER

Water and a little white vinegar with old newspapers or rags instead of paper towels.

TOOTHPASTE

It’s mostly important that you brush and less critical what’s on the brush. Any nontoxic abrasive will work, commonly plain old baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). If you don’t like the powdery feeling, you can mix it with water into a paste, or add a few drops of essential oil for a little extra flavor.

HEALING SALVE/LIP BALM

Herbs for skin healing: calendula flowers, chickweed, plantain, comfrey, lavender, and yarrow

Herbs with antiseptic properties: yarrow, chaparral, usnea, teatree, and lavender

To mix:

Gather herbs from a location that isn’t sprayed with pesticides (many public spaces are).

Dry herbs by hanging or in a paper bag.

Simmer herbs in olive oil over very low heat for several hours or until all water in the plants has evaporated (if your preparation uses fresh herbs).

Strain oil through a fine sieve.

Any water remaining in the salve may cause it to go rancid, so be diligent in boiling off the water!

Adding a little essential oil to the mix can really spiff up your salve.  Teatree or lavender are great for skin salves. For lip balms you can experiment with peppermint, orange, or wintergreen.  Make sure oils are plant derived oils and not synthetic fragrance oils.  They are an investment but still affordable.  A few drops per 1/4 cup is really all you need.

Add beeswax.   The right proportion is about one part beeswax to five parts oil.  Beeswax can be melted in a double boiler (a pot over a pot of boiling water). Add beeswax slowly, testing the consistency by dipping a chopstick or spoon into the mix and then cooling it to room temperature. More beeswax makes a firmer salve. Pour into clean containers (baby food jars or smaller) while the mixture is still warm and let cool. Seal jars for storage. Voila! Share with friends.  It’s best to make a new salve every year, although they do last when stored correctly.

 

As we build new non-hierarchical projects, businesses, houses and institutions, efficient, clear and open group process can make our work a lot easier. Making decisions as a group shouldn’t have to mean sitting in endless disorganized, frustrating meetings or letting our groups be dominated by those with the loudest voices. Here are some tips on how to create effective, fun, cooperative structures for liberation.

Decision Making Process

• If possible, come to meetings having already thought about concrete things to say and discuss.

• Starting a meeting well sets the tone for what is to come. Make a clear agenda that everyone understands and agrees on. Select people to play roles at the meeting: a facilitator or co-facilitators, a time keeper, someone to take minutes, and maybe a stack-keeper and vibes watcher for bigger meetings. Go around the circle and have everyone introduce themselves and perhaps check-in with how they’re feeling to build a cohesive spirit for the meeting.

• Meetings are more fun when there’s food and drink served.

• It can be helpful to have a brainstorm to generate lots of ideas on a particular agenda item. Everyone throws out ideas and no one comments on them or discusses them at the time. They are written down and organized or discussed later.

• Sometimes people raise their hands to speak to a point. The facilitator or stack-keeper will call on people and keep their comments in order. Other times a “talking stick” gets passed around — only the person holding the stick can speak.

• Sometimes, it is nice to have a “go-round” so that everyone in the circle can speak to a point or say “pass.” That will give quieter people who might not raise their hand a chance to speak.

• During the meeting, after discussing a point on the agenda, one or several people can state specific proposals or counter-proposals for the group to act on. This avoids general discussion that doesn’t lead to a clear decision or action.

• When a meeting is having a hard time getting to a decision, it can be helpful to take a non-binding “straw poll” to get a sense of how people feel on an issue. It may be that most people already favor one course and a straw poll can move the meeting from discussion to reaching a decision.

• Many groups use consensus to reach a decision — the process of only making a decision when, after thorough discussion, everyone agrees to a proposal or agrees to stand aside and not block it. This can take longer because it takes time to hear everyone’s point of view and requires people to compromise but avoids a group splitting between winners and losers.

• At the end of the meeting, make sure the date is set for the next meeting. Doing a check-out to state how people thought the meeting went can help heal hard feelings that may have developed during the meeting. It also helps to have people repeat what they agreed to do at the meeting so everyone remembers who will do what later. Write up minutes and distribute them to the group.

Organizational Development

• Groups that grow slowly and organically — starting with small goals and letting the project expand with the group rather than biting off a huge task right from the start — tend to keep going rather than burning out. Avoid endless discussions of abstract structure before you’ve even done anything.

• Collectives work best when they stay pretty small — maybe the size of a band or at most a smaller chamber orchestra. If a project requires more people, several independent collectives can communicate and cooperate on it.

• Having an established welcoming ritual for new members will help the group seem open rather than a closed clique of friends.

• Some collectives are open to anyone who wants to join. Others are closed collectives — new members have to be invited to join by the existing group. Figure out which kind your group wants to be based on the goals and needs of the group. It is okay to decide who you want to work with — being closed can help deal with disruptive people. On the other hand, open groups can include new energy, people and diversity outside your personal friendship network.

• Finances should be open and not mixed with anyone’s personal money.

• Keep a binder with all the minutes of meetings to maintain history as membership changes.

• Avoid development of an “in-group” by rotating tasks, sharing information about how things work, publicly posting meeting times if the group is an open collective.

 

Non-Fiction

On Photography by Susan Sontag

The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen

The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property by Lewis Hyde

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody

You are Here: Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet by Thomas M. Kostigen

Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It by Elizabeth Royle

America, Amerikkka by Rosemary Redford Ruether

Communes: Creating and Managing Collective Life by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Severing the Ties That Bind: Government Repression of Indigenous Religious Ceremonies on the Prairies by Katherine Pettipas

Time On Two Crosses: Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin

Affirmative Acts by June Jordan

Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse by Otto Santa Ana

Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma by Ana Castillo

The Embodiment of Disobedience: Fat Black Women’s Unruly Political Bodies by Andrea Elizabeth Shaw

Resistance: An Indigenous Response to Neo Liberalism edited by Maria Bargh

Queer Beats: How the Beats Turned America onto Sex by Regina Marier

No Crystal Stair: Visions of Race and Gender in Black Woman’s Fiction by Gloria Wade-Gayles

Science and Liberation edited by Rita Arditti, Pat Brennan, Steve Cavrak

Celluloid Closet by Tito Russo & Rob Epstein

 

Fiction:

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon by Tom Spanbauer

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

After the Quake by Haruki Murakami

The Sand Pebbles by Richard Mckenna

The Prodigal Daughter by Jeffery Archer

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

The High Cost of Living by Marge Piercy

The Iron Heel by Jack London

This Perfect Day by Ira Levin

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Johnathan Safran Foer

 

Children/Young Adult Fiction:

Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan

Anna of Byzantium by Tracy Barrett

Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby

The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis

Over a Thousand Hills I Walk With You by Hanna Jansen

We Shall Not Be Moved: The Women’s Factory Strike of 1909 by Joan Dash

Ties That Break, Ties That Bind by Lensey Namioka

 

Magazines/Zines:

Make/Shift – PO BOX 2697 Venice, CA 90294

Cracks in the Concrete – 101 B Coop St. Westmont, NJ 08108

No Gods, No Mattress – 3088 King St. Berkeley, CA 94703

Short Fast & Loud – 255 Lincoln Ave. Cotati, CA 94931

8 Letters – 1414 Lincoln Pl. Brooklyn, NY 11213

The Match – PO Box 3012 Tucson, AZ 85702

On T’ Road – 14 Hessle Mount, Leeds, England LS6 1EP UK

Give Me Back – PO Box 73691 Washington DC 20056

Cometbus – PO Box 4679 Berkeley, CA 94704

Out Of Time

Poz

Bitch

Eat The State

 

In a number of recent cases, the police have used infiltrators/provocateurs posing as activists to entrap people on charges of conspiracy to set fires or blow things up. People went to jail just for talking about such actions, even though no property was ever damaged. In one case, a young punk woman got to know people over a period of years going to mass protests and radical convergences. She flirted and traveled with people, wrote posts for Indymedia, acted as a medic at mass protests, contributed money and resources to activist projects, and gained lots of people’s trust and respect for how radical she was. All the while, she was giving real-time reports to the police and FBI, wearing a wire to record conversations, and plotting her next move with government handlers and psychological consultants.

In the end, she put a lot of pressure on people to participate in illegal property destruction that she was suggesting, and her victims agreed in large part because they wanted to impress her, maintain her respect, and show her that they were “really radical” and totally devoted to the cause. This dynamic frequently operates even when a government agent is not involved. People get involved in militant actions that they may not feel comfortable with for the wrong reasons — due to peer pressure and out of the sometimes mistaken impression that being more militant always makes us more effective.

It’s important to understand how conspiracy charges work and not get yourself in trouble with a bunch of loose talk that you have no intention of ever acting on. You can be guilty of conspiracy just for agreeing with one other person to commit a crime even if you never go through with it — all that is required is an agreement to do something illegal and a single “overt act” in furtherance of the agreement, which can be a totally legal act like going to a store.

Sometimes activist campaigns involve breaking the law — for example trespassing at a powerplant or clearcut site. And sometimes masked figures disable a bulldozer or engage in other highly illegal property destruction. As you read the historical events in this calendar, you’ll see many times when illegal actions were reasonable, helpful or even necessary to move social change forward. Having said that, deciding to do such direct actions must involve a careful weighing of the risks (to others, to your own freedom, to public opinion about the movement) and the benefits. Actions with minimal risks are easier to consider. Hopefully, actions involving huge risks are considered very calmly and carefully.

You and only you have to determine if you feel comfortable with each particular action. If you feel unsure or uncomfortable with what other people are talking about doing, the brave thing isn’t necessarily to go along with someone else’s idea and suppress your own fear and misgivings. If someone is proposing something that you’re unsure about, it can require a lot of courage to excuse yourself from the situation. Responsible activists considering risky actions will want to respect other people’s boundaries and limits and won’t want to pressure you into doing things you’re not ready for. Doing so is coercive and disrespectful — hardly a good basis on which to build a new society or an effective action.

We shouldn’t be paranoid that everyone advocating militant action is a government agent, but it is reasonable to be suspicious of people in the scene who pressure us, manipulate us, offer to give us money or weapons, or make us feel like we aren’t cool if we don’t feel comfortable with a particular tactic, no matter why they do these things. Sometimes the most radical thing we can do is to be true to our own intuition and take the time to think through each situation.

The modern, fast-paced, money-oriented world is a harsh, unforgiving place for sensitive people. Projects like this organizer are tiny, fragile drops in a huge, often hostile bucket. It can seem like our modest acts of resistance have little effect in the scheme of things. But that sense of futility is manufactured. We live at a crossroads in time. In the not-so-distant past, everything was made by hand. This was slowly supplanted by the dawning of the industrial age. Now, the promise of the future looms ugly with its alienating, soulless gadgets that don’t decompose. This organizer is primarily made by hand, designed for you to work out your thoughts using your own hands. The seed of action is thought. We hope this organizer can inspire you to integrate a crafty approach to your thoughts and actions. The actions we take may or may not defend us and the planet from the menance of capitalism. Certainly they are in contrast to the instant gratification that capitalism promises with one hand while it holds the chains that are our doom with the other. But change created by you and a small group of people can have a ripple effect, and we toiled over this hand-made object you hold in your hand to catalyze change.

The people who created the organizer are ordinary people just like you. And yet when we make the organizer, unusual things happen, and we are transformed. People we’ve never met before wander in attracted by the explosion of creativity, lend a hand, and become part of us. Non-artists realize they can create art. As a collective, we rise far beyond the sum of our individual selves. The organizer comes out of a thriving radical community — like a bacteria nurtured in a petri dish — and in turn we hope we help nurture that same community.

• • •

Over the last few years, Samantha helped us make the organizer — sitting around with us late into the night with a scissors in her hand, passion in her heart and intense words on her lips. This spring, she lept from the world and we miss her.

• • •

This is the 16th 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. This year we’re publishing our first book entitled People’s Park: Still Blooming to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the creation of People’s Park in Berkeley. Let us know if you want a copy. Thanks to the people who made this year’s Organizer: Abra, Ali, Arlo, Artnoose, Autumn, Brian, Bryan, Cindy, Coby, Crystal Math, Daryn, Derek, Dominique, Eggplant, Emily, Enola, Eric, Fil, Gregg, Hans, Heather, Jake, Joclyn, Julia, Justin, Karma, Kathryn, Kei, Kermit, Kerry, Knick, Laura, Lesley, Lew, Lilia, Maneli, Melissa, Mentation, Oliver, Pancho, Paseo, Patrick, PB, Rachel, Rezz, Sally, Samiya Bird, Socket, Stephanie, Xarick, Zöe.

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: 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.

 

Note on Moon dates: 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.

 

printed on recycled paper

 

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

 

printed on recycled paper

 

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

 

A key to figuring out how to resist capitalism, earth-destroying mega-technology and velveeta culture is learning how to re-define our values based on what it means to be fully human, awake and free. All of us who’ve grow up within this system internalize its values in subtle as well as more obvious ways. In other words, perhaps without even realizing it we start to define what we like and don’t like, what we are willing to strive for and what we dismiss, what we see and what fades into the background based on a value system defined by an economic, technological and cultural environment structured by capitalism.

The capitalist economic system requires all participants to simplify their thinking and behavior to pursue narrow goals: the most efficient, quick, cheap method, technology or form of organization. It is important to understand that although these goals are easy to understand, they don’t really mean anything — they are means to an end, but the end itself (more stuff, more growth at the lowest cost) doesn’t really have any ultimate meaning. Capitalism has no internal way to determine whether anything — including, in particular, constant growth and cheapeness — is actually good. In fact, on an ecologically finite planet, limitless growth is not good. Capitalist growth may kill us all if we can’t somehow stop it soon. Just having more stuff does not make human beings happy or make their lives meaningful.

Because capitalism is designed around constant competition, the pressure to pursue its very narrow goals is almost irresistible for companies, communities, and individual people. If any element of the system rejects the pursuit of efficiency, others who are more efficient will out-compete the resister who will be forced out.

Human beings are not machines. We are not merely cogs in an economic machine. It makes no sense that psychologically, culturally and in our day-to-day decision making we should primarily pursue efficiency, the lowest costs, and other valueless means-to-an-ends forms of thinking.

The most fundamental aspect of being human is our ability to experience raw emotion, wonder, love, freedom, pleasure and sensation. These are experiences totally outside the awareness of economics, corporations or computers, but each of us knows they are what makes life meaningful on a deep level. When your face is stained with tears — of happiness or sadness, but in either case being-ness — those are the moments you know you’re really alive.

Humans seek freedom, self-determination, adventure and challenges, whereas corporations, hierarchical authority structures and machines seek control, order, routine and the easiest, quickest and most boring solution to problems. Humans seek to express their humanity — we sing, write, draw, dance and rebel. Only living creatures can love, which is an irrational emotion that is also essential and even magic. It is the glue that makes society possible, makes our lives worth living, and can give us the strength and courage to organize, resist the capitalist destruction of the world, and survive. Yet love is totally invisible to capitalism — computers and corporations can’t love. These structures can’t comprehend solidarity that is based on love and that doesn’t depend on trading something for something else.

To create a new society, we have to figure out ways to resist the social structures and institutions that oppress people and are destroying the earth. We have to create alternative institutions that can meet people’s needs based on cooperation, sharing, free will, beauty, pleasure and ecological sustainability. Doing these things means we are re-organizing our priorities away from mainstream goals such as achieving success and getting material possessions.

To the extent the process of our struggle as well as our goals are based on human vs. system values — and to the extent we’re conscious of when we’re being guided by system-values and when we’re being guided by human values — we can decrease burnout by increasing our sense of meaningfulness. We won’t be seeking one path in our politics while self-judging our lives based on internalized values from the system. The part of our mind structured by the system is filled with a lot of “shoulds” that upon closer inspection may not make a lot of sense. It can be easy for our “reasonable” system-mind to doubt our human impulses for adventure, freedom and ill-advised love that can leave us dangling out on a limb.

Taking a different path or doing it yourself for your own reasons will be slower, more difficult and often very confusing and messy. Resisting the global machine means you’ll miss out on the treats it has to offer, and it may role over and crush you if you don’t step out of the way at the right moment. The funny thing is that a lot of times, enjoying easy treats makes you feel empty, while seeking complex, tough pleasures makes you feel alive and engaged. Taking the human and therefore sometimes irrational and inconvenient path seriously and following it with all your heart is what the world needs most right now. We’ve gone as far as we can with making things fast and cheap — now its time to build something meaningful and human.

 

So many people walk through the world asleep – working a job, going shopping, checking and re-checking email . . . hoping for a little stimulation, following the rules and playing it safe on a treadmill. This sleepwalking and disengagement on a mass scale leads to a world of soulless concrete, toxic waste, economic injustice, isolation, bank bailouts, loneliness and global warming. Those who control the economic and political power thrive on sleepwalkers.

With this organizer, we demand to stay awake. And yet we can still dream wild dreams — with our eyes open — of a transformed world. It’s time to focus on what winning will look like. We seek adventure, freedom, and pleasure first — not as an afterthought or a hobby relegated to weekends and two weeks of paid vacation. Structures must serve human needs, be based on love, engagement, and harmony with the earth, and be directly controlled by those who participate in them. Any structures that don’t must be obliterated. We don’t have time to waste dealing with corporations, bosses, cops or machines that seek to manage and control our lives. Our community and love for each other is powerful. Will you join us as we stay awake this year?

This is the 19th time we’ve amused ourselves by publishing the Slingshot organizer. Its sale raises funds to publish the quarterly, radical, independent Slingshot Newspaper. We try to distribute the newspaper for free everywhere in the US. Let us know if you can be a local newspaper distributor. We are working on making a smartphone app-version of this organizer that will come out by 2013 so if you know how to program apps, please contact us because we need help to make it happen. We’re also trying to post updates about the Slingshot universe on our Twitter (@slingshotnews). Thanks to the volunteers who created this year’s organizer: Alex, Ali, Amara, Angie, Anole, Ben, Bernadette, Calentine, Claire, Collin, Crystal, Dominique, Douglas, Eggplant, Enola, Fil, Gina, Heather, Jesse, Joey, Jonathon, Judy, Julia, Kate, Kazoo, Kermit, Kim, Lew, Melissa, Moxy, Rachel, Solomon, Sofie Jo, Stephanie, Susie, Suzanne and Zoe.

 

Slingshot Collective

A Project of Long Haul

Physical office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley, CA 94705

Mail: PO box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

510-540-0751 ex. 3 • http://slingshot.tao.ca • slingshot@tao.ca • @slingshotnews

 

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Anti-copyright.

 

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