mewmew foucault

i also really liked this thing that julymoon wrote on a reblog of ourcatastrophe’s post on call-out culture

julymoon:

[…] I think one of the interesting things about youth&&radical movements is their ability to imagine new things, but the flip side of that can be a profound failure to examine social movement history.

3xosc:

Someone posted this on tumblr the other day and I finally got around to reading it- good job whoever wrote this {I didn’t find their name in the document}.  I’ve long been interested in the way that subcultural identity happens, particularly it’s journey from a rebellious/revolutionary and anti-hegemonic movement, to one of exclusion whilst replicating the same conditions {of class, race, gender oppression} of the mainstream, to the commodification, appropriation, and sale of the image of anti-normative subjectivity by consumer culture.  Punk is a great example of this process- any revolutionary, movement-based retaliation against the mainstream hegemony quickly becomes reduced to aesthetic ideals and clique-ish pockets of “cool” identity- self marginalization, as the author says {and I love how this paper discusses the way that punk, just like any other predominately white subculture that comes from the middle class, excludes people of color and silences women while simultaneously claiming to fight for eradication of those exclusions}.  Inevitably, anti-mainstream subcultures all tend to become a force of the market- a way to appropriate rebellion, to silence dissidence, and to make white middle-class dropouts believe they are revolutionary while cutting any political power they might wield off at the knees.  It’s really a brilliant tactic- if you can convince people that they are outside the hegemony and truly bringing change through their subculture, while simultaneously reduce their movement to a commodity, you reap profits and contain and neutralize anyone that would speak out against you.

Yet, here I am in Portland, and while I was so excited about the liberal ethos here, the feeling that everyone seems to have that they are really against the hegemonic mainstream, it’s just a smorgasbord of all these commodified “anti-mainstream” subcultures, and any fight for real change I’ve seen here is already defeated by the market…

As for me, well, I’m certainly guilty of having participated in these subcultural pissing contests- battling for who’s coolest, who’s most outside the mainstream, while at the same time having no effect on the mainstream that I so want to destroy- but I’m just kind of tired of it.  And since I’ve begun transitioning, poverty hasn’t been a fashion accessory and being outside of mainstream society hasn’t been a political choice- they’ve become the hard, painful reality of my every day life.  And yet, meeting the subcultural fashionistas has resulted in frustration and misunderstanding- it’s weird to have once occupied a space that I thought was clearly defined from the mainstream and to now be able to look upon it as still part of the hegemony.  Not the very least because of my exclusion for being actually poor, actually gender non-conforming, and for not being able to participate in consumer culture- even {especially?} the anti-consumer consumer culture of so many subcultures.

i don’t have a whole lot to say about this right now, but, quickly:

[1] it’s pretty fucked - and very often quite sexist, classist, and racist - when parents and other primary caregivers are structurally pushed out of activist and organizing spaces because of their status as parents/caregivers and the social responsibility that comes with that

[2] it’s pretty fucked for lots of reasons when kids are excluded from activist communities, too, obvs

[3] i really really really wish that i saw more children’s rights / pro-child folks being more vocally critical about the ways that (certainly in the u.s. and undoubtedly in other nations as well) parents and caregivers who are poor or non-white or immigrant or in some contexts queer are systemically denied resources that would give them and their children a greater number of choices about how they can act and what they can do with their lives - while those same non-normative parents and caregivers are regularly demonized as too stupid/violent/uncivilized/irresponsible/unnatural to be ‘good’ and so have their parenting and caregiving actions policed by the state and by privileged folks around them - sometimes to the point of temporarily or permanently having their kids taken or coerced away from them in unjust and oppressive ways and for unjust and oppressive reasons

idk i just overwhelming get the feel from a lot of pro-child stuff (as opposed to pro-parent or pro-kids-and-the-folks-who-take-care-of-them stuff, which definitely has a different tenor) that the rhetoric tends to boil down to blaming bad and mean and repressive parents/caregivers and condescending laws, rather than engaging in a more complex analysis of the ways that various communities and cultures construct childhood and youth and adulthood and parenting and caregiving, and how those constructions are implemented and prevented and modified in a world saturated with capitalism racism sexism colonialism etc - i always feel like the ideal parent/caregiver of the pro-child narrative has lots and lots of time and energy and resources and money to freely spend with their kid(s), and that really really bugs me

(Source: kissingunderspiderwebs)

an awesomely cranky old leftist rant via shag at Wear Clean Draws

very much worth reading

and i dunno what city shag’s in, she’s always been pretty private about particulars, but all this is very relevant to this week’s creative loafing cover on the beltline

also, you know a phrase i hate? “mixed income housing”

ugh ugh ugh the most sad, bullshit excuse for tearing apart poor and working class communities and thinking that’s ok because some folks *might* get to stay for a while, until their wealthy neighbors drive up the price of living to the point of unsustainability

ugh

[…] Anway, what has inspired the rantage is this: I work with a lot of younger folks. I am only appearing to blame it on the youth, but I suspect it isn’t youth that is the issue: it’s liberalness. They just make me want to scream sometimes. 

As an example, there’s a series in the local alt rag. It’s about two people trying to live on a very low grocery budget. it’s another one of the artisanal geekery projects like you see all over lifehacker, boing boing, etc. where people try to get back to basics and the do-it-yourself lifestyle. They turn what used to be simple stuff - baking a loaf of bread or making your own Italian dressing - into a project that must be photographed, hashed over and hashed out, commented on, intellectualized, stroked, and - well - turned into a fucking project! Just bake the damn bread already. Really. it’s not that big a deal. honest. In fact, fuckers, people used to - and still do - make bread every day without batting an eyelash. it was what you did. The idea that you would have to write a blog post on it, let alone document it with a camera or video recorder would have been - and is! - ludicrous.

So, these two young folks are exploring bargain food shopping on a limited budget. Fine. They ramble on about how they find - whee! - bargains in the bargin bin. They made dinner for 50Cents for two people with a 10cent bag of potatoes, a 10ct bruised squash, a 10cent tomato (from which sauce was made and “It wasn’t that hard!” - OMG, I am sticking forks in my eyeballs after reading that….)

[…] [W]hat irritates the living shit out of me is the idea that shopping the bargain bin (or picking over items at a thrift shop) is the solution to any fucking thing other than your own limited funds at the moment. Running around pimping the ideas as some sort of “Hey, you can do this too!” answer to the social problems of poverty, food prices, industrial food production, whatever…. it just makes me pissed as all gitout! The problem with thinking this is: it won’t scale. If everyone started ransacking the bargain bin, it wouldn’t work. By definition, the bargain bin is going to be limited. There won’t be enough 10cent sacks of potatoes for everyone who wants to live on a budget.

And then there is the infestation of Richard Florida bologna going on. My god: it’s sad. The Richard Florida meme infects EVERYTHING. And it’s gotten to be, at least from my observation, that there is a sense of entitlement that they own the world. They’ve come to believe the meme: in order for cities to prosper, FloriDUH, argued, you have to cultivate a city that makes the creative class happy: nice downtown areas, lots of gay friendly spaces, lots of bike lanes and bike paths, walkability, yadda. Once a city attracts the creative class, then the city will be able to recruit business to locate in their cities. Job problems solved! Rusting out rustbelt? Gone! Poof! Vanish! How? you just make sure there are a lot of gay bars, cool arts venues, public art works, bike paths, etc.

Now being someone who, myself, wants to see all of that and more in my adopted city, whatever. I play the movers and shakers in town to get what I want. […]

But, of course, there’s none of that cynical use of Richard FloriDUH to get what they want on the part of The Libr00l Yoots. They believe, with a ferocity, that the only way their city will survive is to cater fully and faithfully to every whim of the Yoots. Yoots want a grocery store downtown, Yoots should have it. Yoots want free beer, Yoots should have it. Yoots want Whole Foods downtown, regardless as to the fact that there are two grocery stores only 1 mile away and not enough people living downtown to sustain a second store.. well, Yoots should have it! […]

When I mentioned to these yoots who wanted a whole foods that, gosh, it would kinda suck that the entire West side of the city would now have four fucking grocery stories within a mile of one another, while people who live i the east side have exactlly one shitty Fresh Pride within walking distance, and many do not even have that since the next grocery stores are three miles away …….. i get a glazed over look.

Because walkability and grocery store density is not about the convenience of every fucking one, it’s about the convenience of the Yoots. What was I fucking thinking to be worrying about everyone who lives in this damn city. The only people who matter, doncha know, are Yoots.

At these meetings and events to encourage, say, busking or a more queer friendly city, I try to ask about the extreme whiteness of the endeavors. This, for fuck’s sake, is a city composed of 59% black folks, 8% Latino, 4% asian. WTF are there no people of color here?

Rhetorical damn question.

It would almost be forgivable if they were completely blind to race. But that’s not the case. They are the ones who bring it up. For instance, at an *ology (a nick I’m giving for the series of events) event last June, we were supposed to break out into groups who wanted to focus on technology issues, gay and lesbian issues, music, arts, small business climate, race, biking, etc. etc.

So, I went and stood in a spot and said “Race Issues Here” to which an astounding 0 people showed up. When I straddled an imaginary line and said, “I’ll do Queer issues too!” no one showed up. Because, by and large there were no (out) queers there and only a couple of people of color. I leaned over to the organizer, giving him a hug as I left, and said that I wanted to do more about race issues but it shouldn’t be the case that I, a white person, was going to bring the answers to the poor blighted communities of color. We had to do more to get the word out that something like *ology existed, that it wasn’t a whitey club, that it really was about racial justice, etc. etc. No doubt he thought I was speaking Venusian with a Plutonian accent.

Because, of course, the issue isn’t to really give a shit about race. The issue is to plaster on the patina of giving a shit about race. As long as the people *look* as if they care about race, that’s good enough for making the Yoot happy. […]

So, there’s a huge outcry that goes like this, “Why does my city hate me? Why does my city care so little for me that it won’t get a grocery store to locate downtown? Why o why o poor me boo hoo.”

*rolls eyes* So now they are lobbying for whole foods or trader joe’s to show up. Because the real problem of food affordability and walkability for people who don’t have cars is just that: being close and convenient. it’s not about being able to fucking afford the groceries. I mean, shit, less than half a mile away on the east side of town are all kinda poor people who have a crappy low-rent grocery that always plants itself near the projects. The nearest decen and still affordable store is three miles away. Why o why doesn’t our city give a shit about them, eh?

I mean, why o why is the poor me’ing going on imagining that all people in need of a grocery store downtown are people who can fucking afford to shop at Whole Foods.

Rhetorical fucking question.

I can’t believe these Yoots. The sense of entitlement is overwhelming, depressing, utterly shocking.

[…] When I pointed out to these whiners that the backbone of the city in terms of money - who actually lived there - were empty nesters, retired boomers, and military personnel who, yeah, like living downtown so they can walk to the bars and, yes, so they walk to the store, so they have an easy commute to a couple of bases, etc. etc. and y adda, I got these glazed over looks. Why? My guess is that they can’t stand the idea that the people who are spending money are NOT like them. The people who want to live downtown in much greater numbers than the Yoots are people who have different desires. yeah. they like the grocery store. But they aren’t freaking out about it because they can walk a mile to another one if they want. And if they don’t, they will hop in their cars because, shonuf shit, they ain’t without a car. So, no grocery store is no big deal to them. They still get everything else for which they’d moved downtown: nightlife, pleasant surroundings, lots of awesome walking opportunities, the opera, the museum, the theater, a big ass mall, lots of restaurants…

[…] When you point out that maybe just maybe there are reasons why a grocery store can’t make it downtown, a mere mile from another outlet which is catering to a much larger population than that which lives downtown. I mean, the downtown store effectively operated to serve one neighborhood, while the one a mile away operated to serve about 15, competing with two other stores nearby to boot. This kind of stuff doesn’t matter to them. it’s just irrelevant. And it’s irrelevant because they have no concept of the way capitalism works in their lives.

I watch them learn, bit by bit, about the way the market actually rules their lives. They believe that it is all about evil 55 year olds who won’t make the right decisions because they are old, uninspired, lack creativity, don’t know how to use facebook. They don’t understand the structural limitations within which they live, so it constantly comes as a shock to them to learn that, wow, maybe there is something else going on.

As an example, I watched in fascination one day as the editor of an alt daily rag, a big Yoot and fan of FloriDUH, opined that it had never occurred to him how much “voluntary” media censorship went on because a media outlet has to rely on advertisers.

I thought I was going to have to run around scraping the floor with my jaw, doing a little impromptu floor cleaning, after hearing that one. I didn’t think I’d be able to put my jaw back in place. Wow and holy shit. You go to school and get two masters degrees, you work on behalf of all sorts of social justice projects, and you run a media outlet (an online magazine that took the place of the former alt weekly rag) and you are only now, with wide-eyed innocence, realizing that there is a powerful force called the profit motive that might actually be, er, a problem?

Fuck me dead already.

I’m not sure if any of that made sense. it’s so insider. I’ve been away so long. But it was burning my ass and I’ve had to lay off the biking and gym due to a lingering cold….

Also? Get off my damn lawn you rotten kids! […]

“Kelli’s Child Care Collective is a collective in ATL of volunteers who seek to provide liberation-based, anti-capitalist, anti-sexist, anti-racist, anti-abelist, free radical childcare. We partner with organizations that recognize childcare as an institutional need. The high cost along with the low quality of childcare has a devastating impact on low-income families, who are disproportionately made up of single mothers, immigrant women and families, and women of color. These groups are absolutely essential to progressive movement-building. The Collective therefore seeks to provide quality, competent, free, politicized childcare for ongoing meetings and one-time event for progressive organizations, and to meet the after-school and work-hours childcare needs for low-income families.

[…]

Please keep in mind that we have kids of all ages, so we need some really simple images and some more complex ones. Also, you don’t have to draw things that fit within our mission (for instance you can draw an ocean scene), but it is preferred (so maybe draw and ocean scene with the animals as “the good guys” and the BP ship as the “bad guy”!). Also feel free to incorporate text and words. Some pages have a little “moral” at the bottom, while others aimed at younger children just have one word that they can color in and learn to read (like “train”). If you know Spanish, we can really use some pages that incorporate Spanish words.

All submissions should be on plain white paper. You can draw them in pencil first then outline them in a dark marker (brown, green, black) to make it easier on yourself. They will be xeroxed so, the darker the marker the better.

In the end, we will put together some of the more political/social awareness ones for a future radical coloring book that the childcare collective will release!! If you submission is chosen, we’ll give you credit for it. If this is something you are interested in, start drawing!”

Email submissions to digitalhaunts@gmail.com

for all you awkwardness and/or contemporary linguistics fans out there

you know who you are