Katrina

I went to Pages to Prisoners tonight and on Monday nights, its mostly students in the service learning program, a program where students get college credit for volunteering with community organizations and writing about/discussing their experience and social issues related to the volunteering or organization. Tonight, Megan, who is the volunteer coordinator, read some news reports and anectdotes from hurricane survivors that talked about the charictarization of crimes like looting, race, class, and prison issues in the wake of the storm. She made the statement, regarding media bias, that most of the people seen on TV are poor and black, which, probably has a lot to do with the population demographics as 67.25% of the city’s residents are Black or African American and 23.2% of individuals living in Orleans Parish living below the poverty level.

This made me think about the more institutionalized issues of race and class. This past week’s This American Life episode asks why so much of the blame for the mishandling of hurricane of humanitarian efforts was placed on state/local authorities. It makes me think about how a whole region could be ill-equipped to deal with catastrophe and that this can go largely ignored because of the demographics of the region. It also makes me think that this makes for an easy scapegoat. Does a region inhabited largely by those marginalized in mainstream society get fewer resources in general? Are their govermental officials more corrupt and more inept? The recent events seem to remind us that this could very well be the case.

Tonight, when talking about prisoners being left locked in some jails and prisons, many students asked, “how could someone just leave another human being there to possibly die?”, and wondered whether prison guards and officials would be held accountable. With my background, and perspective, and politics, I would like to think that in their situation, I would make a more humane, concerned decision. I guess there should be some accountability for individual’s lack of concern for people they watch over or care for, but more than anything, I’m not surprised that when it comes down to making tough decisions and weighing ones own concerns like family, property, and all the other things that comprise one’s life in our culuure and the concerns of those who are pushed to the edge of our culture, that people make bad decisions. I imagine that the low-level people who could have made some decisions to help people weren’t getting a whole lot of guidance from their superiors and the lack of anticipation or taking responsibility for taking care of prisoners or the homeless, elderly, and hospitalized probably reflects an institutionalized disregard on a local level. Again, the national response, whether from the government, media, or people on the street that localizes the blame for all the tragedies is equally representative. I think that we’re all pretty ill-equipped to have concern for others, and as we get caught up in notions of race and class, it makes this even harder. Its sad.

gas out

someone sent this to the defiance, ohio e-mail account:

PUT IT ON YOUR CALENDAR FILL UP ON THE 6TH OF SEPTEMBER 2005 AND NO GAS ON THE 7TH, 8TH, OR 9TH 2005 TIRED OF THE GAS PRICES?? Let’s all stand up and makea
statement – we won’t pay these prices.

Please fill up on the 6th of September 2005 and don’t buy gas on the 7th, 8th or 9th. Have a great week! Years back on April 30,1999 a gas-out was staged across Canada and the U.S. to bring the price of gas down, and it worked. It’s time to do something again. Only this time lets make it for three days instead of just one. The so-called oil cartel decided to slow production to drive up gasoline prices.

Let’s see how many Canadian/American people we can get to band together for a three-day period in September, NOT TO BUY ANY GAS! OLINE, during those three days. LETS HAVE A GAS OUT—-September 7th, 2005 TO September 9th, 2005. Buy what you need before these dates– or after– but none during this time period. If you want to help, just send this to everyone you know and ask them to do the same. We brought the prices down once before, and we can do it again. Come on North America lets stand together to make a difference!

Even if you receive this 100 times keep passing it around, this way you know everyone is being informed and no one will forget!!!!!!!!!!!!!

notes

Renee wanted to know how to get a copy of Windows XP. It looks like IU students can get it for $10 on CD from IMU 074.

I had to return The Confusion to the library. I was on p. 350 in the section where Eliza was using a masque with party guests as unwilling actors for describing how to get silver into England to pay soliers as part of the French/Irish invading forces.

voting, again

When Brian was through on his Dance of Dogs puppet tour, he brought the newest issue of our friend Kane’s zine that had an article giving an anarchist/anti-authoritarian perspective on voting (and punk rock bands/figures supporting voting), making the familiar and mostly sound arguments about the problems inherent in voting and how utterly disappointing the platforms of viable candidates tend to be.

I was listening to the August 15, 2005 episode of Rust Belt Radio which had a segment about the Leauge of Pissed Off Voters. I think I have written in the past about being impressed with this organization after seeing a representative talk at Boxcar Books last year.

The Rust Belt Radio interview of a Leauge representative mentioned, though somewhat indirectly, what I think is cool about this group. Certainly, I liked how they organized non-hierarchically and did a very good job or reaching out to youth in groups traditionally marginalized in politics, but what I really like about the group is how they add some new perspective to the “voting doesn’t work” debate. A common objection to voting is that the candidates are indistinguishable from each other in terms of platform and voting record and that one’s vote only validates the candidates continued bad judgement. The way the League works is that it publishes a voting guide based on progressive values. This happens at a grass-roots level (i.e. organizers in each city, such as Columbus, OH, which I thought had a very nicely constructed voting guide, research and construct a guide) and anyone can submit a guide through their website. They then allow people to report whether they voted based on the guide and then contact candidates with information like the number of voters who voted based on the guide and also the rationale for endorsing various candidates. The benefit of this is that it gives additional value to ones vote because it shows candidates that you, along with hundreds or thousands of others voted a certain way, for instance, not because you supported certain policies, but because you viewed them as a lesser of two evils, or they can see that you supported other candidates, specifically because they were truly progressive in their platform or track record. Provided that enough people express their voting choices in this matter, it could shift the policies of mainstream candidates, or at least offer encouragement to losing candidates who had a cool platform or have been traditionally progressive. Essentially, your vote goes from an categorical support of a candidate to something that reflects more of the subtleties and concerns of an individual or small group. If one feels like the politics or decision criteria of the Leauge isn’t radical enough, there certainly isn’t anything stopping people from copying their model.

I still feel that voting is a pretty marginal tool for social change, but I think with groups like the League of Pissed Off Voters doing what they do, some of the more common arguments for not taking the few hours of researching issues and candidates and the few hours at the polling place don’t hold as much water.

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When I used to be in college, and would drive, drive the six or so hours back to the town where I grew up and maybe the first few times that I made the trip, it was exciting because I fealt adult, I felt mobile.

I never really had a car when I was a teenager, and I could rarely take it to places farther away than the nearby city. One afternoon, a friend and I had been skateboarding, and afterwards we drove up to the top of the mountain and then off onto the gravel road. We parked at the gate and walked the rest of the way up to the radio tower, all bleak concrete and barbed wire, haunted as it sat on the bald spot on the top of the hill. We just circled the clearing in silence, conversation replaced by the growl of some secret electronic beast deep within that concrete cave and the sound of the buzzards who would light from the metal tower and circle over our heads. As we were driving back down the mountain, I asked my friend how he had found the place and he said that some days, he just drove around by himself. I fealt lucky, after he dropped me off at my house, like he had just shared something very private and intimate with me.

So, the first times that I took the turnpike down, I thought that it might be that same feeling for me, sitting alone in a car with my thoughts charting out some new personal territory. But, I guess, I never really gave it a chance. I stuck to the turnpike and the interstate and only stopped for gas at the bright gas station where you could order sandwiches without ever saying a word to someone by pushing buttons on a little computer screen. After a few trips, the road just got so boring. More than once, in the last hour of the trip, I would be so excited to be nearly done with my drive that I would be playing the radio loud, greeting the exit signs for familiar towns by singing aloud until I would see the highway patrol lights flashing in the rearview mirror. Other times, I would just get this feeling, about how surprising it was to be in control of tons of steel moving at 70 miles per hour, how a slight jerk of the wheel could send me out of my lane, grinding past the rumblestrip, and through the bent old metal railing. And I thought, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, because at least it wouldn’t be the boredom of seeing green signs and white lines pass me by, hour after hour.

This summer, I spent a lot of time riding in a big bus that had a door near the middle that was meant for an emergency exit, but we would clamber out of it, not being able to sit still for one more second. And there were moments when I got that same of desperate boredom, and wondering if this seat on this road was really where I should be and wanting to be somewhere else, not because where I was seemed so bad, but just for the change. I thought about opening that door and hanging out over the side of the bus and watching the broken white lines become one line from our speed, and all the little pebbles in the asphalt becoming one blur, amorphous like dirty water. And I thought about jumping out of that door and I remember half thinking that I wouldn’t collapse into the pavement because the act of doing something as stupid as jumping from a moving bus would take a conviction that would somehow let me float and soar alongside the bus. But, obviously, I didn’t float and soar, because I didn’t jump either, just like the time when I was seven and extorted a pack of baseball cards from my mother by opening the sliding panel door to the minivan and threatening to jump. Which, I guess is a mixed message because my conviction, or at least a believable enough facade of it, was enough to get me something that I wanted.

The last time I saw my mom, a few weeks ago, and let slip how I was planning on living in the next few months (when she asked, “why does everything have to be so hard?”), I wondered if her thought process was the same as when I opened that van door as a kid. If she was trying to decide whether or not to call my bluff, or feeling terrified that I was young or ignorant enough to do it. I guess I use my mom’s reaction to some things as a litmus test for my own conviction. If she, who has seen me make plans, and make bold statements, and bellow and excite throughout my life, believes that I’ll follow through with all my grand plans and the uncertainty that swirls around them, then I can believe that too. Its not surprising, but its sad that what brings me comfort brings her only worry and confusion.