courtesy of Phoebe, the solidarity with Graeber website

Desolation Rose Walk

okay, i've been real delinquent, and this isn't going to help matters much, but I want to direct everyone's attention to an important matter. Which you probably already know about. But i'd be remiss if i didn't say something. More real blogging later.

So David Graeber, "small-a" anarchist anthropologist and global justice movement ethnographer, was effectively fired by Yale University last week in a climate in which members of his department had refused to speak to him and had already sought to fire him for his (anti)political affiliations and activities. The powderkeg in this most recent development seems to have been Graeber's support for a GESO organizer (who was in Hazel Carby's class with me last year) whom some senior faculty were trying to expel for reasons related to her organizing.

Some have tried to link this to the Ward Churchill circus, but I think that gives Churchill a lot of credit. There is no merit whatsoever to most of the charges people think Graeber's detractors made against him (none of which happen to be public.) That he is being targetted not because of his scholarly work, which is beyond reproach, but rather because of his defense of the GESO member and his activist praxis and organizing is admitted even by those seeking to give him the proverbial boot. This is extremely scary and extremely fucked up. Like 1996 all over again. As an anarchist about to enter a PhD candidacy, i'm understandably looking at this fight as self-preservation. If you haven't done so already, you'd best sign the petition.

d'oh

turns out the schomburg's closed on Mondays (and the collections i want also seem to be closed Tuesday.) So it looks like i'll be back in New Haven today and possibly tomorrow as well...

First off, i thought my post about Russel Crowe and Marvin Gaye was not only lucid, but hilarious. Unfortunately it seems i'm the only one who laughs at my own joke, so i'll extend my apologies to my exhaustive readership. Which, as far as i can tell, is Julie.

Speaking of exhaustion, the commute between NYC and New Haven is leaving me with bags under my eyes the size of MC Hammer's pants circa the February 1991 Hammer-Ice playground debates. I almost fell asleep in the SML microfilm room. I did fall asleep on the train this morning, in brief fits and starts anway. Still managed to read a good chunk of There Ain't No Black In The Union Jack though, which made me feel productive, And i finally got a fucking ID card, which means hopefully i can get folks at the Schomburg to let me access some restricted collections. Which means i won't be coming to New Haven so much if at all, except for tomorrow, cause i'm on a roll with the Baltimore Afro-American Ledger and I really haven't seen Dāv since the September strike. Having the ipod paradoxically helps me focus on the reading - it's useful for tuneing out the yuppie cell phone conversations, and blasting "5 million ways to kill a CEO" into my earlobes strikes me as devilishly appropriate in such circumstances, or whenever passing through Greenwich or the adjoining suburbs. Alright! Enough narcissism!

1.Sam Cooke, "A Change Is Gonna Come." Sifting through years of Jim Crow/Krystalnacht-era black newspapers, with daily reports of lynchings, racialized violence, strikes --the hate strikes of white skilled tradesmen unwilling to integrate their unions and what Luxembourg would have termed the "political strikes" of African-Americans flocking to the CIO unions, and the organizing and vision of the membership and leadership of unions like the Brotherhood of sleeping car porters, lead me to this song's extraordinary lyrical depth and symbolic power.

Bob Dylan: "4th Time Around"

Bob Dylan: "Absolutely Sweet Marie." Nothing I really want to say about either of these songs right now, except they're incredible and they're on one of the best albums i've ever heard.

Charles Mingus: "Group Dancers." It appeared under other names elsewhere, but this piece of melody from The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady is probably my favorite single Mingus composition of them all. Which is saying a lot, cause i've been obsessed with Mingus since i was like 16.

Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings: "How Long Do I Have To Wait For You?" Steve Cropper called, and he wants you to teach him that guitar riff.

ok, sorry, that sucked. Read the last entry and make pity laughter.

On his iTunes Celebrity Playlist(TM), Acteur Galore Russel "I may be insane, but look at Mel!" Crowe predictably includes the song all Escalade-driving rich white people listen to when they want to claim some sort of kinship with, or really ownership of, urban subalternity, Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On," which also happens to be possibly the greatest song ever recorded. In his grandiloquently annotated comments, Ol' Maximus dixit, in some bizarrely moronic attempt at profundity:

"Marvin Gaye asked the right questions of everyone but himself."

Ok Russ, let's review. Marvin Gaye was murdered. By his father. In his parents' house. While asleep.

With this in mind, i'm left to wonder exactly what question Marvin was supposed to ask of himself. "Should i not go to sleep now and get shot in my sleep by my repressed jealous father?" (Nah, no tragic overblown metaphor for pathologized construction of african-american racial "self destruction" worth being piously delivered by stubbly Meg Ryan ex there.)

Only Russel Crowe knows the truth!

The New York Times: cheerleader for supergentrifying the already gentrified.

The Village Voice article from last week rings more true.

"New York will be a healthier city if we can have a mixed economic base," Mulhern said. "It is unhealthy to make huge parts of the city uninhabitable by working-class families."

Southside Mission has helped organize Churches United for Fair Housing, which is pressing the City Council to put more units of affordable housing into the Bloomberg administration's controversial waterfront rezoning.

Reverend Jim O'Shea, a priest who helped organize the campaign, said he is rankled when news accounts refer to the neighborhood as a "frontier" and the newcomers as "pioneers." It's "like Columbus," he said.

I hadn't thought of it that way before: This is the language of colonial oppression. It's time to see the story through the eyes of the Southside.

The Slackers: "International War Criminal." You know Bush is that fucked up when Vic Ruggiero goes all Daraka Larimore. Not bad, not bad at all.

The New Pornographers: "Twin Cinema." New new pornographers. Um, yay.

Sufjan Stevens, "Chicago," (leaked from Come on, feel the Illinoize. Or whatever the fuck it's called.) I'm not so sure i'm feeling it. I'll probably change my mind though.

The Breeders, "Drivin' On 9." I heard this song - along with "Cannonball" and "Divine Hammer," before i ever heard "Silver" or "Here Comes Your Man," or "Gigantic," and this song may have been the moment where i realized just how awesome Kim Deal is. It's one of the Breeders' best, and one of the first songs i really learned to play on the guitar.

Le Tigre, "My My Metrocard." Ahem. "Fuck Giuliani. He's such! a fucking jerk./shut down! all the strip bars/welfare! does not work."

The Go-Betweens, "Spring Rain." Appropriate because of thw weather and the yuppie assholes on the train sitting in front of me screaming into their cellular phones and then gushing about their wedding plans, which made me in sucession frustrated cause i couldn't concentrate on There Ain't No Black In The Union Jack and then bitter about the fact i haven't been on anything resembling a date in a very, very long time.