Welcome to occupied New York

where your one-week rental comes complete with effective undeclared martial law, a public-private police force willing to brutalize and arrest any and all unsanctioned disturbances to your agenda, assurances that certain yale juniors known to wear "Fuck White Supremacy" t-shirts will in the future be kept 100 feet away from any and all event personages, (we love you thomas!) and free run of the gentrified upscale amusement park into which we've spent the last decade transforming the city. Amadou Diallo? Patrick Dorismond? No, silly, that was for the september 10th people! We're september 11th people! We don't shoot immigrants! We just detain them infinitely, deport them, and lock them in our wal-marts! (When not using them as strikebreakers against revolting service workers at our alma-maters. Good help is so hard to find these days.) Ok, we only shoot them sometimes. Or we just let them die in the desert and hope no one notices! But back to the subject! Yes, New York can be yours for the low, low price of a few tens of millions of dollars, which which your allies in big oil, voting machines, and the defense industries can surely spare, and a smidgeon of political capital. Well, we can even make you look moderate. And we'll throw in exploitation and expropriation rights to any marketable tragedy and trauma you may wish to capitalize upon while here! Don't worry, we'll keep that pesky multitude we keep hearing so little about from the news networks we own and control from utilizing any of the spaces we still pretend are 'public.' After all, i mean, how better to use all those millions we're spending on "defense" and "security" than abusing and beating the people who actually live in this city?

For me, part of the fight against the conventions has been the central question of the privatization of urban spaces and the corporatization and militarization of the "new times square"/herald square area as well as the trauma of september 11. The republican convention's attempt to hijack New York is a totalizing gesture which constructs our city as a sort of pliant tourist destination and historical curiousity and the attacks of september 11th are understood similarly as an opportunity to take advantage of the rich history of a site available for political exploitation. Those of us who actually live here, who work here, who have fought to shape and reshape the social geography of this city, are silenced, confined to pins for delegates to ogle and police to beat and spray or banished to the "nether boroughs" or to neighborhoods tour buses stop in only for a dash of ethnic flavor for their narrative of gentrifying urban potpurri or dare not drive through at all. Bloomberg's winning right now, standing on the shoulders of 8 years of Giuliani and twelve years of zero tolerance policing and racist politics of exclusion. This week, we aren't just demanding an end, we're building a new new york together.

one commentator on the police violence at the Poor People's march (via the NoRnc Listserve):

After an initial brief scuffle the police managed to get the barricade a

little over half way across the street and then stopped and radioed for help.

They then tried again to push the barricade through the crowd. By this point

many demonstrators had linked arms to block the progress of the barriers. As

this was happening 12-24 police in riot gear stormed the crowd from the north

with a two handed baton charge knocking down numerous demonstrators. Seconds

later about a dozen unmarked police scooters charged the crowd from the south

running into many of the people still on the ground. Police officers and

horses then cleared the intersection forcing demonstrators east on 29th St.

Eventually people were allowed to disperse and only a few arrests were made.



This event highlights the misuse of protest pens by the police. These barriers

have been an ongoing source of tension between demonstrators and police and

deny people of their basic right to freely assemble. The NYCLU

report “Arresting Protest” highlighted the misuse of pens at the Feb. 15, 2003

anti-war rally, and it is clear that this practice has continued despite a

court order to the contrary. As long as the police continue to aggressively

divide legal demonstrations in this way, they will have incidents of

confrontation. The job of the police should be to protect demonstrators and

the public and not to escalate confrontations through pointless micro

management of protests.

shame on the NYT (and the fucking cops too)

Most of the interactions i've seen with delegates have been peaceful. Yes, we're protesting them, because they are invading our city to plot how to frther fuck our world over, and while they dine in fancy restaurants we're getting the shit beaten out of us by trigger happy cops acting like hired goons for capitalist plutocrats. I seriously doubt the account of a protestor attacking a cop at the poor people's march is true, because i was there and the march was completely peaceful until the riot cops went nuts and began pepper-spraying and fencing in the crowd and not letting folks leave. The attacks on the mouse bloc folks last night were unjustified and the press should be condemning these repressive acts of state violence against peaceful protestors rather than making absurd apologies for police violence. In the wake of the past two nights, i'm very worried about what the direct action planned for tomorrow (check out RNC Not Welcome for details) is going to look like. All of these actions are non-violent, but the police have already coded the a31 Coalition as terrorists and Nonviolent Direct Action as a pernicious fifth columnist terrorist act, and i doubt the police will be as scrupulous as the folks in the streets in eschewing violent acts, given that they seem to have adopted a "by any means necessary" approach to ensuring that the Republican party's corporate welfare-subsidized rental of midtown manhattan (an ambitious privatization project if ever there was one) continues with minimal disruption.



Aside from the police repression and the paper of record's fallacies, the protest itself has often been powerful and inspiring. Prior to the police attacks, the Poor People's march was a huge high point. Yesterday's march was massive, fun, and with the possible exception of 2/15/03, which was sort of a singular experience, and the anti-nuke demo in central park my parents brought me to as an infant, among the largest protests at which i've ever been present. This morning's Still We Rise march was energetic, loud, and beautiful. While i'm amused at how many old friends from high school i've bumped into in the course of the past two days i'm more struck by the sheer stregnth of the determination i'm seeing in the marchers, demonstrators, protestors, et alii, to build together the new world we are carrying in our hearts.



more later.

the new geso site is hot!

If i were a Yale graduate student, i would join based on the coolness of the website alone.

sorry about the lack of posts. Ipods are very time consuming. Hardt and Negri are coming to sign books or something at the barnes and noble four blocks from here in september. Bizarre, but it'll probably be a hoot.

"This is a song about a superhero named Tony. It's called 'Tony's theme.'"

Negri and Hardt's Multitude seems both more comprehensible than its predecessor, (this after only the first 72 pages) with ample definitions and explications of the authors' ironic excursions and satirical attacks on ideologues reactionary and neoliberal alike. It's also more immediately topical, with direct references to torture and biopolitics in this global moment of imperial consolidation. I take issue with the teleogical account of "ever more democratic" structures of organizing and social change by the multitude, which seems to exhibit a certain selective memory about forms of struggle in previous eras, but i nevertheless am finding the book both fun - references to Star Trek episodes' philosophical ruminations on mechanized smartwars and huge section headers proclaiming "May The Force Be With You" continue Empire's delight in brilliantly absurd juxtapositions (St. Augustine and the Wobblies, for instance, though i continue to believe the whole thing was a tongue in cheek Dylan reference) and emiiently useful alongside Butler's Precarious Life for theorizing this new(?) age of imperial war and what other possibilities we can build from its ashes.



Finally saw Kill Bill 2 last night. As with the first half, stunningly beautiful direction and cinematography, bizarre and absurd story. Thurman, David Carradine, and Michael Madsen, all contribute terriffic performances, and RZA's nod to Liquid Swords (the clip from Shogun Assassin) is worth watching simply on its own merits. My parents are back in the country. My dad still has no moustache and i am totally freaked out. He looks five years older without the hair on his face to mask the lack thereof on his head.



Evan worries that people are finding his site by searching for "horse fucking" and cautions himself to tone down the derogatory adjectives with roots in taboo interspecies non-consenual sexual encounters. Then he promptly calls Farallon Capital Management "filthy-goatfuckers®."



Rock on.

Josh Loves Anarchy

Josh, still a self-described "liberal," delivers a truly fair and balanced reading of today's alarmist and deeply biased times article which even thomas frampton and amelia frank-vitale could love! If more "liberals" were like josh, we'd all have universal health care and Ralph Nader wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

nostos and algia revisited

If the enjoyable and often powerful week in arizona was about learning to be gracefully useless and sometimes invisibly useful, (carrying stuff, poring over possibly fraudulent signatures for the execrable anti-immigrant police state "Protect Arizona Now" Prop 200 ballot initiative, and taking care of drunk people, mostly the last five days of driving were more ambiguous -- sometimes beautiful, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes euphoric, sometimes infuriating. And now i'm back in New York, trying to find work - browsing idealist, and considering other options, and trying to, as Shikha would put it, "process" the sensory and emotional overload of the last two weeks and of returning here and attempting to get out of here as soon as possible.

The Mustang was fun to drive in until it stopped starting, in Sutton, WV, in Katie's parents' place in Pittsburgh, in a gas station near Hershey, Pennsylvania, where i became so frustrated i hurled my cellular phone into a pile of gravel and split the battery open, (Bizarrely, it still functions, but i am probably giving myself cancer at an even more rapid rate than before,) before the exit toll of the NJ turnpike to the Holland Tunnel, and then terrifyingly in the middle of the Holland Tunnel itself. When the car started again in the tunnel, it held through a pretty scary ride up west street and the west side highway to my parents apartment, where Julie dropped me off, and then promptly gave out in the middle of the cross-bronx expressway as she was driving alone back to New Haven. It's in the shop and will hopefully be fit to drive soon, but the whole situation really sucks for Julie, and i imagine that breaking down on the cross bronx expressway at like 10:30 PM was not a particularly fun way to start one's final year of undergraduate study.

I'm not sure i want to write much else about the last two weeks here - i wouldn't want this blog to develop some sort of colonial travelogue aesthetic, and there are all sorts of things i haven't founds the words to deal with yet,. Similiarly, i'm debating wheter or not i want to keep blogging. I'm gratified that friends read it, but i'm not really sure right now what i'm getting out of it or whether i'm putting into it what i should be. So we'll see what happens, i guess.

I saw three college classmates on the street this morning, not one of whom acknowledged my presence. So am i that big of an asshole, or is that just what the expected ettiquette is towards us slothfully unemployed layabouts from the upwardly mobile yuppie set?

Hiatus. Haliaetus? No. Haliaetus is a genus of eagles (as well as the species name for ospreys. Just hiatus. I am a huge dork

I'm hopping on a plane to Arizona in eight hours, so this is my last post for around two weeks, after which i will probably still nto have a job or much of a social life, so i'll probably resume posting. Until then, smash yale and call the cell if you need me.

In which i pretend to know what i'm talking about when it comes to baseball

The mets are on a minor winning streak. They're 8 games out of first place, but this is still good news. As a former Philadelphian and a strident phillies fan (at least, prior to Mike Schmidt's retirement) it's good they're doing well. Hopefully they will knock those fascist braves out of first. I hate those fuckers. I mean, c'mon. Chipper Jones? Fuck that guy!

Well, this is pretty fucked up.

Apologies for slim posting lately. It looks like instead og going to Tucson for the weekend, i'll be there for a week - and then instead of flying back up to NY, i'm driving with Julie in her mustang. Well, ok, i'm not driving, she is. But it's going to rock. I'll have my cell phone, so if you need, just call me. You don't have to worry, Wait. Wasn't that a song?



My only regret is that my new cousin, Etta - Andrea's third child(!) will be born probably tomorrow, and i'm probably not going to see her before i get back. But i do need to get out of NY. And this will be really fun. And i may get to meet Juan. (hehe.) All in all, i'm psyched.

Weirdest dream yet last night. Yuppies turn into insane murderous dinosaur aliens and me, Julie, Lauren, and a bunch of other UOC people have to defeat them or something. And my 87 year old grandmother was somehow involved (on our side, i think.) It was really scary. I read too many comic books when i was a kid.



I've been here for over two months now, and i'm kind of fed up.

Miscellany

I don't think i ever realized exactly just how freaking long Disintegration is. I took it on one of my four-mile walks today, pressed play in the elevator of my aprents building, and didn't hit the end of "Untitled" (one of the best album closers ever - ack i sound like a character in High Fidelity) until i was crossing 79th street on the way home, around 80 minutes later. And it's a great album, to boot.



I'm on my second spin of the day of DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, which i wasn't hip enough to be listening to back in '94, but which is really amazing and i feel like i could just leave it in my CD player for a couple years and never get tired of it.



Someone found this site by googling "Shamus McNasty", which is funny a) because Shamus McNasty haven't been a band for like four years despite the relative activity of all four members and i don't know why someone would google them - though i certainly think they were a great band, and b)because i rarely get search hits to this site, and i only mentioned Shamus McNasty like yesterday and already i get a search hit and it's for a band who haven't played a gig together in four years. But i can't really think of a band whose first gig i would rather have been a fake roadie for. Well, except for, like, the Replacements. Or the Pixies. Or the Clash. Ok, shut up.



I have a carcinogenic and ulcer-causing bacteria in my stomach for which i have to start taking antibiotic cocktails tomorrow. This continues for a week, and then in three months i go back to the GI doctor and take a "breath test" (sounds like being busted for DUI or something) to see if the damn things are dead or not. And on top of that, my fingernail is infected and very pustual. I'm sure you all wanted to know that. Oops, too late.

While googling friends in a fit of boredom i stumbled upon a memento of the most painful and exasperating experience organizing undergraduates - (other than the time Julie didn't show up at the Peabody action with the Llamas, which for some reason inspired me to have a temper tantrum. Thank god Abbey and Katie were there to talk me down.) I am speaking of the April 7, 2002 Six hour long YCC vote on whether or not to pass Matt Robinson's resolution condemning Card Check Neutrality and advising the university to never enter into a crad check agreement with anyone. Over the course of the night, we heard Robinson boast that he knew more about card check than anyone else in the room (which, in addition to a whole platoon of SLAC and USAY folks, also included Lis Pimentel, David Sanders, Anita Seth (listed in the minutes as Anita Singh, for some reason,) Michael Denning (listed as "Matt Denning." They didn't get Butler or Gaddis's names wrong... They also quote a "Katie Klein," but that's just me nitpicking) and Local 34 veteran Steve Fortes.) We also heard the editor in chief of the YDN, who is now a speechwriter for the Bush administration, vocally bash the union and urge representatives to vote for Robinson's resolution in a manner many found reprehensible. I had forgotten the sheer arrogance at play that evening. Reading the minutes reminds me of that, but also of how so many of us were willing to sit through all the bullshit and keep the pressure on to make sure that justice was served. While i still think of the whole night as a pretty disgusting moment in my life, i also think that folks like Jacob and Abby L., who argued that defeating the Robinson resolution and including a clause in the final resolution passed which urged the university to sit down with GESO was a huge victory, were right.



Anyway, if you want to revisit this sorry chapter in the history of undergraduate complicity in administrative attempts at union busting, you can do so here

Holy Crap

The B-Team, known by UOCistas erstwhile and current as "The GESO band" has a web page. They definitely get a link.

Nicotine Bubblegum is great. There's the usual Beatles influence that pervades about half the songs Sam writes (the others tend to lean towards Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, veering often into the nether regions of Surfer Rosa's chaotic bursts of sarcastic fury and Doolittle's epic pop perfection,) but" Drivin' On Hawaii," a Grossman/Beins/Dydo composition which is arguably my favorite song on the CD, unapologetically owes a great debt to the Velvet Underground and sounds absolutely fantastic.

Skip Gates jumps on the Cosby bandwagon, tacitly endorsing the erstwhile Dr. Huxtable's pathologization of black youth and urban black working class subcultures. I'm fine with Gates' assertion that the construction of race in America necessitates that African-Americans be in some sense bilingual, and I don't necessarily disagree with the statement that there is anti-intellectualism among poor and working class black youth, although in the many years i have spent working with high school and middle school students in both New York and New Haven, i haven't seen all that much anti-intellectualism, if any, and what may have been present certainly had nothing to do with parents' decisions to name their kids "Shaquana" or "Ali", as Cosby slanderously alleged in a capitulation to the anglo-saxon supremacist cultural perogatives of people like Samuel Huntington and Pat Buchanan. It's certainly true, as Gates argues, that "we" need to treat black people, for the purposes of this debate, as individual actors individually negotiating the structural violence of race, class, gender, sexuality, and militarism. What irks me about Gates' op-ed is that he doesn't do this, instead, as with much of what Gates writes, the paternalism which pervades his narrative and with which he endows himself with an unquestionable textual omniscience and omnipotence, treating the objects of his scrutiny very much like "helpless rag dolls" in his own "supreme act of condescension."