Filed under: Notes from the world ]]> http://dombrassey.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/tower-ring-by-pauline-oliveros-at-ann-hamilton-tower-oliver-ranch-geyserville-ca-6/feed/ 0 domlet http://dombrassey.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/tower-ring-by-pauline-oliveros-at-ann-hamilton-tower-oliver-ranch-geyserville-ca-5/ http://dombrassey.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/tower-ring-by-pauline-oliveros-at-ann-hamilton-tower-oliver-ranch-geyserville-ca-5/#comments Mon, 06 Jun 2011 19:58:27 +0000 dom brassey http://dombrassey.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/tower-ring-by-pauline-oliveros-at-ann-hamilton-tower-oliver-ranch-geyserville-ca-5/ ]]>

Tower Ring by Pauline Oliveros, at Ann Hamilton Tower (Oliver Ranch, Geyserville CA), originally uploaded by dombrassey.

Filed under: Notes from the world ]]> http://dombrassey.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/tower-ring-by-pauline-oliveros-at-ann-hamilton-tower-oliver-ranch-geyserville-ca-5/feed/ 0 domlet http://dombrassey.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/tower-ring-by-pauline-oliveros-at-ann-hamilton-tower-oliver-ranch-geyserville-ca-4/ http://dombrassey.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/tower-ring-by-pauline-oliveros-at-ann-hamilton-tower-oliver-ranch-geyserville-ca-4/#comments Mon, 06 Jun 2011 19:58:16 +0000 dom brassey http://dombrassey.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/tower-ring-by-pauline-oliveros-at-ann-hamilton-tower-oliver-ranch-geyserville-ca-4/ ]]>

Tower Ring by Pauline Oliveros, at Ann Hamilton Tower (Oliver Ranch, Geyserville CA), originally uploaded by dombrassey.

Filed under: Notes from the world ]]> http://dombrassey.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/tower-ring-by-pauline-oliveros-at-ann-hamilton-tower-oliver-ranch-geyserville-ca/feed/ 0 domlet http://dombrassey.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/dom-brassey-has-switched-to-tumblr/ http://dombrassey.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/dom-brassey-has-switched-to-tumblr/#comments Mon, 14 Mar 2011 07:54:48 +0000 dom brassey http://dombrassey.wordpress.com/?p=426 ]]> Tumblr is a better tool for the lightweight posts I make these days.
Look for my new posts here: http://dombrassey.tumblr.com

Here’s a little snippet of me from medialiteracyproject, recorded at the U.S. Social Forum 2010 in Detroit, MI.  I was attending Third Wave’s session, Reproductive Justice 101: Creative Vision, Innovative Strategies, and Powerful Networks.

Ruckus writes:

For us, the idea of being a part of a process that was born in the global south was very strategic, since it absolutely feels like the issues we are facing in the U.S., and in the west, are beyond our capacity to resolve in isolation. Ruckus commits completely to the global struggle against the mentality of “profits over people”.

In addition, the way the U.S. has embodied this process has been to have grassroots and indigenous groups centered in the planning, visioning and execution of the work, which aligns with the direction Ruckus has been growing in.

We see the forum as a way to bring the Ruckus toolbox of strategic action planning and training to a broad, intersectional, radical body of likeminded folks in Detroit and nationwide.

xo

U.S. Social Forum 2010
June 22-26th – Detroit, Michigan

Wednesday, June 23^rd
Organization: Streetwise & Safe
Time: 10am-12pm
Location: Cobo Hall D3-24

Title/Description: Show Some SAS! Streetwise & Safe (SAS) is a multi-pronged youth leadership development and organizing initiative involving LGBTQQ youth of color who have experienced policing and criminalization in the context of “quality of life” policing and policing of prostitution in New York City. In this workshop, we will share our unique curriculum and “know your rights” materials, which are specific to gender and sexuality specific forms and contexts of police misconduct and abuse. Workshop participants will collectively brainstorm possibilities for nationally coordinated locally-based advocacy around policing policies and practices which target and adversely impact queer youth of color.

Organization: Collaboration between Young Women’s Empowerment Project, Different Avenues, Streetwise & Safe, Queer Injustice

Time: 1pm-5pm

Location: Cobo Hall D3-18

Title/Description: Callin All Street Youth! A People’s Movement Assembly bringing together organizations from across the country working from an empowering social justice, harm reduction and leadership development perspective with street-based youth to talk about issues of policing and criminalization in the context of “quality of life” policing and policing of sex work. Centering the experiences of young women and queer youth of color and using popular education methods, participants will share information about their programs and the conditions they face in their cities, skills and strategies, and solutions grounded in the experiences and realities of youth of color. Together we will develop strategies for working more closely together, supporting each other in our local struggles, and building a world free of violence against youth!

Organization: Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights

Time: 1pm-3pm

Location: Woodward Academy: 1471

Title/Description: Young People & SexEd Organizing: Sexual Education y Reproductive Justice

Learning Objectives: 1. Participants will learn about the herstory, definitions and values of Sexuality Education Justice and Reproductive Justice and what the young people at COLOR and their partners are working on; 2. Participants will be able to explore the different intersections of age, race, gender, power and other identities and how they pertain to sexuality education, health, and justice; 3. Participants we leave the workshop with a short term plan on how to individually push issues of sexuality education in their schools, with family and friends and through their own organizing work. Engagement: Dialogue – Herstory and Background Group Activities – Why Young People should be leading this part of our social movement? Theater of the Oppressed – Our relationship to sexual education, health, and justice and our identities. Self Reflection Activities and Planning – How will you do your part whether broad or specific when you get back home? Alternatives Proposed: 1. Young people to lead sexuality education justice movement with the help of their allies. 2. Approach the issue of sexuality education justice through grassroots community youth organizing as well as policy changes at the school, local, state and federal level. 3. Begin and continue safe and productive dialogues and conversations at home, school, and work. Strategies to Achieve Alternatives: 1. Understand the role of allies and make sure that young people own their responsibility and passion by having them lead. 2. Identify what areas young people are passionate about and where allies work. Guide youth in organizing by their callings. Some more inclined to presenting within schools others are inclined to testify on behalf of communities to push policies. 3. Participants will create a plan to be word warriors and spread the message and values of sexuality education justice.

Organization: New Voices Pittsburgh: Women of Color for Reproductive Justice

Time: 3:30pm-5:30pm

Location: Cobo Hall DO-01A

Title/Description: Organizing for Reproductive Justice in the Rust Belt

This workshop will serve as an opportunity for individuals, organizers and organizations doing Reproductive Justice work in the Rust Belt Region to caucus and discuss building a network of Reproductive Justice sites for support, mobilization and coalition-building. New Voices Pittsburgh: Women of Color for Reproductive Justice will share a brief presentation of our work and current campaigns. We want to explore resource and skill-sharing and facilitate a brainstorming session on strategies and actions steps for multi-organizational, multi- state and multi-issue grassroots organizing within the Rust Belt region. This workshop will offer all of us organizing in the in Rust Belt region a critical opportunity to meet and create a stronger movement that is more connected working toward local, regional, national and international change together. Reproductive Justice is: 1. A social change movement to ensure that all women have all choices about our bodies, sexuality, labor and reproduction; 2. A Human Rights-based community organizing framework that seeks to ensure our: Sexual Rights, Pregnancy Rights, Birth Control & Abortion Rights, Birthing Rights and Parenting Rights free from individual, family and state-sanctioned violence; 3. The affirmation of our identities and the end of all forms of oppression; 4. The complete physical, emotional, spiritual, political, economic, environmental and social well-being of women and girls; and 5. A positive means to transform ourselves, our families and our communities through the healing practice of self-help.

Thursday, June 24th

Organization: Media Literacy Project

Time: 1pm-3pm

Location: Westin Book Cadillac Hotel WB3

Title/Description:

Words Can Break Your Bones: Hate Speech in the Media, Its Rise and Effects, and How to Drain the Poison

This interactive, multimedia workshop will explore the rise of hate speech in media systems. Through small group activities, and interactive dialogue on media examples, audience members will participate in the national conversation on how hate speech needs to be defined in ways that are meaningful and relevant to people of color, immigrant communities, and LGBTQI communities. Join the Media Literacy Project, National Hispanic Media Coalition, Media and Democracy Coalition, and Media Access Project as we work to have the FCC produce a study on the impact hate speech has on our daily lives.

Friday, June 25^th

Organization: Young Women’s Empowerment Project

Time: 10am-12pm

Location: WSU Old Main: 1134

Title/Description: Street Youth Rise Up!- Building a Youth Lead Transformative Justice Campaign with Street Based Youth

Young Women’s Empowerment Project is a member based social justice organizing project for girls and transgender girls involved in the sex trade and street economy. Using harm reduction, popular education, transformative justice and healing values we work to organize young people across Chicago who are street based, homeless or homefree. This will be a two hour workshop that will connect the dots between our youth lead participatory action research study to our current campaign work. We will talk about challenges and strategies for organizing street based youth, our campaign to change the way Chicago sees its Homeless Homefree and street based youth and we will share tools we have developed to track institutional violence in our communities. People will leave with new concepts about the sex trade and street economy, tools to organize young people in their community and inspiration!

Organization: National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health

Time: 1:00pm-3:30pm

Location: Woodward Academy 1449

Title/ Description: Immigrants Rights as a Matter of Reproductive Justice

This workshop will make connections between the immigrant rights and reproductive justice movements. Participants will explore what is reproductive justice, delve into some immigration history and get a better understanding of why immigrant rights are a matter of reproductive justice. Participants will also learn about current issues at the intersections of immigrant rights and reproductive justice and how they can get involved through presentations, interactive activities, and small group work.

Organization: Third Wave Foundation, New Voices Pittsburgh, Media Literacy Project

Time: 1-5pm

Location: Cobo Hall, DO-6B

Title/Description:

Reproductive Justice 101: Creative Vision, Innovative Strategies, and Powerful Networks

Around the country, women of color and feminist youth are organizing, advocating and achieving wins around reproductive justice. We’re working at the intersections of gender, race, class, health, education, immigration, media justice, environmental justice, and LGBT liberation in order to connect with, empower and mobilize our communities. In this workshop, we will explore the added value of the reproductive justice framework in our work for social justice. We will explore the potential to be found in collaborative, multi-pronged movement strategy. We will center our bodies/experiences in this work using art, storytelling, and multimedia tools. Reproductive justice is integral to and holds liberatory power for all of our movements. Join the Third Wave Foundation, the Reproductive Justice Network, and grant partners from around the country as we journey together from our personal and communal experiences to the movement for reproductive justice!

Organization: Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights

Time: 1pm-5pm

Location: Cobo Hall 02-35

Title/Description:

Young Queer/LGBTQ Women and Sexual Health – We’re our own experts!

Participation Objectives: 1. Participants will gain knowledge regarding Young Queer Women and Sexual Health its herstory, current climate including struggles and victories; 2. Participants will be able to share their expertise and experiences as Young Queer Women and their allies; 3. Together participants will identify gaps in Young Queer Women and Sexual Health and create or share grassroots community and individual solutions to these gaps; 4. Participants will create a resource and guiding document for either a zine or video highlighting those identified solutions to educate and outreach to their own community regarding Young Queer Women and Sexual Health. Participant Engagement: Dialogue – Engage Participants in Herstory and Current Climate of Young Queer Womyn and Sexual Health Group Activities – Discuss gaps and solutions of Young Queer Womyn and Sexual Health Theater of the Oppressed – To express the experience and expertise of young queer womyn and sexual health through body movement. Creation of Creative Media – Plan, Script, and Create video or zine highlighting participant identified solutions. Alternatives Proposed: 1. Have young queer womyn share their experiences and solutions to sexual health both medically and holistically to other young queer womyn. 2. Create a tool that can help have that information sharing of the solutions to sexual health specific to young queer womyn. Strategies to Alternatives: 1. Create a culture of sharing information orally and through gifts of wisdom especially with young women – breaking that ageist idea that only elders can pass wisdom 2. Split the time in two with the first half addressing the topic and the second half constructing a tool with documentation of the address of the topic but most importantly with solutions. 3. Talk about competency while addressing as many intersections of identities as possible – gender, race, power, class.

Organization: Different Avenues

Time: 3:30pm-5:30pm

Location: WSU-S 261

Title/Description: Re-defining Feminism and Choice: Criminalization and Survival in the Sex Trade

This roundtable will stage a conversation between activists who are trying to complicate the framework of choice and the assumptions of “sex-positive” discourse in majority white sex worker activist movements. The organizations featured pursue program development in ways that center instead race, class, and age and membership-based leadership and research programs, and also re-theorize the relationship between the sex trade and a wide variety of criminalized activities in the informal economy. Particular attention will be paid to the place of “street economies” within sex worker advocacy movements. Participants would include Kelli Dorsey from Different Avenues in Washington DC, Andrea Ritchie of Streetwise & Safe in New York, Deon Haywood of Women With a Vision in New Orleans and others with Christina Hanhardt is moderator.

Organization: Young Women’s Empowerment Project

Time: 1pm-5pm

Location: Cobo Hall W2-70

Title/Description: Harm Reduction and Transformative Justice: Responding to and Creating Alternatives to Violence in Our Communities

Harm Reduction principles and practice seek to reduce violence and harm experienced by individuals and communities by understanding the multiple causes including trauma and systematic oppression. We will introduce a Transformative Justice (TJ) framework, including principles and practices as an effective approach to responding to and seeking justice in individual and community cases of violence or harm in such a way that challenge oppressive systems and do not reinforce state violence and repression. Through this workshop we seek to develop models for harm reduction programs to integrate violence prevention, response and services to address trauma and to train anti-violence organizations in harm reduction practice. TJ seeks to provide those experiencing violence or abuse with immediate safety and long-term agency, healing and reparations while holding those who are violent or abusive to others accountable within and by the communities in which they live or are part of. This accountability includes stopping immediate abuse, making a commitment to not engage in future abuse, and reparations for past abuse. Such accountability requires community responsibility to support people who are violent in changing their harmful behavior and as well as to access to personal healing. Beyond those who experience and perpetrate violence, TJ seeks to build community relationships and standards of behavior that reduce violence and increase collective capacity to organize for greater justice and health.

Olbermann remarks:

…any political science fiction nightmare you can now dream up, no matter whether you are conservative or liberal, it is now legal. Because the people who can make it legal, can now be entirely bought and sold, no actual citizens required in the campaign-fund-raising process. … And the entirely bought and sold politicians, can change any laws.

93-year-old professor Sidney Gluck responds by video:

The Supreme Court has exercised the worst rightist movement that I have witnessed in two generations — by sanctifying the finance capitalist class and industrial capitalists’ [desire] to put their accumulated personal wealth in to guarantee that they control the Congress. (See his video response.)

Ronald Dworkin summarizes Obama’s response:

… This appalling decision … was quickly denounced by President Obama as “devastating”; he said that it “strikes at our democracy itself.” … he said, “Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.” (Dworkin agrees.)

Read the full text of Olbermann’s commentary on Michael Moore’s website. Flint becomes us.

In this video clip, he urges foundations to find greater success through greater openness, accountability, and transparency.

How can foundations be more effective?

I transcribed his answer:

They have to be more open. The logic of the non-profit sector, for the most part, is not that the nonprofit sector is going, actually, to provide service delivery. What the nonprofit sector as a whole can do is to pioneer in the generation of ideas about how to solve social problems better (that’s what the Urban Institute does). You’ve got to be open about the successes and failures — not just to the extent in saying that something failed, and giving the evidence on the basis on which it did — but providing the blueprints of the things that succeeded — so that people can build on them. Because, if other nonprofit organizations and foundations can’t build on what these pilot-generating foundations do, then, the system is broken!

At the time that I wrote [The Foundation: A Great American Secret], I could identify really only four examples of foundations that had publicly admitted that something they had launched was a failure. Now, that’s just the wrong way of going about it. If the premise of the nonprofit sector is “we’re going to start pilot projects, and we’re going to do the research on them, do the evaluations of them, that document if they are effective or not effective,” then you’ve got to provide that information to the public. You certainly don’t want to provide information to the public only when they’re successful — but that’s what foundations do, by and large.

And I have to say that a growing number of  foundations have begun doing things to counter that. It’s beginning to happen. Most foundations say it’s very difficult to do because they’re used to a very close-to-the-chest decision-making process. Some, they  just don’t want people looking over their shoulders, saying, “Oh, isn’t that terrible? They spent money on something that didn’t work.” Well, that’s not the point! The point is, they spent money on something, that, if it had worked, would make a difference — and it will save other people money by not having to repeat the mistake again — if they know about it.

But my sense is that there’s an openness to it. I’m not suggesting it’s easy to do this. I’m certainly not suggesting that it’s easy to change the culture. But I’m suggesting that what it takes is a number of individual foundations leading the way, and showing how it can be done. It’s not painful, it’s just difficult. And, more people are beginning to do that.

See more clips from The Urban Institute’s coverage of Joel Fleishman on the Role of Foundations.

Calls From Home on Thousand Kites' Flickr Photostream

Listen to Samples from National Radio Broadcast:

• Hip-hop meets Mountain Music (2:46)
• Grave Prison Yard (1:50)
• The Wind (0:45)

Thousand Kites says:

Ten years ago when prisoners … wrote us about human rights abuses and racism we responded as artists. … One of the first poems that came back to us from Wallens Ridge State Prison was a gripping poem called “Grave Prison Yard.”  We responded by creating a public performance.

Thousand Kites believes:

• The criminal justice system is the most pressing civil rights issue in the United States;
• Breaking down the silence surrounding the U.S. criminal justice system through storytelling and listening helps people find effective solutions to over-incarceration in their communities;
• Because policy follows public perception, insuring that there is ample opportunity for free and open dialogue demands that all communities work together for media justice.

Learn more:
www.thousandkites.org

Another photo from Thousand Kites' Photostream

Documentary Video from Thousand Kites:

San Quentin sunset, seen from outside east gate.

I wrote this “invitation to study hall” for students enrolled in Patten College at San Quentin, the college-level education program inside SQ where I’ve been a writing tutor and occasional course instructor for almost four years. This “last college program left standing” is coordinated by the Prison University Project 501(c)3 and supported by tax-deductible contributions; courses are taught by volunteer professors, lecturers, and graduate students.

10 Reasons to Come to Study Hall

1. Tutors are available on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings (and Friday mornings) to help you succeed in your studies.
2. Tutors are to students what steroids are to baseball players.
   Except we are legal, and studies show we don’t cause side effects.
3. Side effects of visiting tutors include:
   1. increased enthusiasm
   2. decreased anxiety, and
   3. clarified clarity (for purposes of clarification).
4. Tutors explain what your teachers may or may not be asking for, in a course assignment — and they often help you nail it! (This means, we can help you get the results you are working for.)
5. Tutors can help you embrace the ambiguity and the ecstasy of learning unknown and somewhat inarticulable things. (This means we help you survive and enjoy the danger, the excitement, and the challenge of learning a college curriculum.)
6. Tutors will help you put apostrophes in the right places.
7. Tutors can help you organize your burning barnyard of ideas into an orderly ark of calm yet majestic animals who want to prove a point.
8. Tutors can help you rally your troops to meet requirements, meet deadlines, and meet expectations.
9. Tutors will correct your in-text references or your APA or MLA bibliography.
10. Even if you don’t meet with a tutor, study hall is a designated place for you to encounter your own mind and your own learning and skill-building processes with respect, and focus on your own thoughts and ideas. Tutors will greet you as a student with warmth, respect, and encouragement.

Tutors encourage you to sign up to attend the study hall session that is convenient for you, and to pro-actively seek peer-support and tutor assistance with your studies, so that you can succeed, beyond what you ever thought possible!

San Quentin, CA
Spring 2009

PS, Check out these celebrity geeks inside the institution:

Dave Winer, Guy Kawasaki and Robert Scoble inside east gate.

Here’s an excerpt from E.B. Boyd’s Bay Newser article about their “blogger field trip” to San Quentin, in October 2009:

A group of high-profile bloggers—including celebs Guy Kawasaki and Robert Scoble—is headed to San Quentin today to talk social media and learn how the prison is using technology to manage inmates, keep correctional officers safe, and communicate with families.

The trip is part of a series of similar outings, called “Embarks,” organized by California journalist and documentary filmmaker Dennis Hall.

Cool. Keep the grassroots journalism coming. xo

PLEASE HELP STOP GUN VIOLENCE IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD

The argument for Gay Marriage is about equity and civil rights, and the position you take is your expression of what you believe liberty, inclusion, and citizenship in a just society look like.

Do you believe that thought-communities which harbor and encourage discriminatory politics should use the shared infrastructure of our state and its systems of governance (laws) to disenfranchise the families of an entire class or subcommunity of people?

If you do, please change your mind, your heart, your politics, your position, your relationship to the state, and this bad condition where some of us are unable to share in the wealth of liberty.

Not a single one of us has complete freedom or security, because we live in a world where we are interdependent, and the incalculable sins of warfare, explicit and encoded, weigh upon us all.

But there is such a thing as a condition of greater equality. There are opportunities to shield ourselves and our peers from the brutal and life-abbreviating violence of discrimination. This is one of them.

Gay marriage is not primarily about gays or marriage, or family, or sex; those are particulars. In essence, it is an opportunity to end one instance in which our laws are used instrumentally to exclude a class of people from liberty and justice. It is a case study in civil society, a turning point in the history of family politics, and an opportunity for everyone in America to advocate for a more equal America.

So please, bring your talents to this issue. Bring your resources.

Make an effort as a citizen to resolve this issue on the side of justice, and then stay politicized, stay a champion.

I don’t care who you are.

Your attitude towards gays is actually the last thing that interests me.

Excerpts:

Why is Net Neutrality a civil rights issue?

The Internet has the potential to increase equity in media access and political participation for historically marginalized communities. Due to high barriers to entry in television, radio, and cable, traditional media outlets have not included enough diverse voices, or provided content that is significant and relevant to underrepresented groups. With lower barriers to entry, the Internet can create a platform where these groups can speak for themselves and on behalf of their communities, to wider audiences. Neutral networks grant equal opportunity to every idea and can help ensure that communities of color do not experience the same lack of representation they have in other media platforms.

Why is Universal Broadband a civil rights issue?

The nearly 70-year commitment of Congress and the FCC to Universal Service has helped to deliver essential telecommunications services and connect rural areas, the poor, schools, libraries, and communities of color to jobs, education, services, and health care. It made the telephone an indispensable communication tool, and increased the value of the public network to all users. However, serious inequities still exist. Defining broadband as a public infrastructure and Universal Service will address these inequities, help foster economic growth and democratic engagement in the poorest communities, and increase their quality of life in immeasurable ways. Broadband access and deployment to poor communities, communities of color, and rural communities is essential to the public health and public safety of our nation.

What is Sex::Tech?

The Internet and mobile technologies have strengthened youth networks, provided new avenues for expression, and increased youth access to tools and information designed to improve their sexual health. Sex::Tech explores available tools and methods for reaching youth with culturally appropriate STD/HIV prevention and sex education interventions. Technology developers, accidental techies, educators, researchers, youth, public health professionals, activists are all welcome.

http://sextech.org

the new baby’s mouth, even empty, grasps itself,

in its own softness, seeking a mother’s warm gift.

when you died, more than anywhere else, i felt it in my mouth.

you escaped from me that way,

your last movement, the opposite of a kiss.

you took my heart, liver, lungs.

things i thought were my own.

happiness.

the word “theft” gently tears the tongue

like a tiny paper ticket

stub

admitting

only

one.

* * *

[ the specter of a woman,

naked from the shoulders, up. ]

mothers in Kenya, bearing their breasts to soldiers.

saying, how dare you raise a gun, a knife, to women, who suckled you.

our sons are already murdered. you know this.

that is why we are here, protesting.

that is why you are here, soldiers with your guns.

ready to make blood, the mad laughter of shooting.

but look, before you shoot.

look at yourselves.

look at us.

http://fora.tv/2009/09/09/RIGHTS_Malika_Saar_on_Protecting_Women_on_the_Margins_

* * *

- i’m happy i got to know you.

- it’s meant so much to me,

- this opportunity, this gift.

- it’s a gift you have given me, i’m thankful for it.

- i have to go. i have to go to Corcoran, they’re shipping me out.

- thank you for all you have given me.

- i may not see you again.

- i’m only a few more weeks.

- in case i don’t see you again.

- last week, we were on lockdown.

- they had us on lockdown.

- there was an incident.

- what you have taught me,

- i am taking it with me.

- one day, i would like to be able to out-talk you.

- i would be proud if i could ever learn to do that.

- i am thankful.

- you don’t know what it’s meant to me.

- you don’t know what it’s meant to me.

- you don’t know what it’s meant to me.

- you don’t know what it’s meant to me.

- you don’t know what it’s meant to me.

- you don’t know what it’s meant to me.

- you don’t know what it’s meant to me.

because in prison,

teachers are not allowed to say —————— .

perhaps i should have been a real monk.

with paperwork.

but ha, real monks never have paperwork.

so the sandal fits.

and a good teacher says nothing

but —————— .

http://prisonuniversityproject.org/pages/news/news.html

* * *

a friend of mine once got in a cab.

i watched him do it.

i was standing on the sidewalk in front of the house where we both lived.

then he flew on a plane, back to his country.

i didn’t know how to say goodbye.

i went upstairs, back to my room, and put on a record he loved, and cried.

one has to cry for both greatness and inadequacy.

sometimes, until the sun comes up.

sometimes, until it goes down again.

sometimes, when a woman does something simple,

like touches your feet.

overall, one has to cry,

to let the violence of the bomb

tear through the tissue of the ears,

the softness of the brain,

the stillness of the night.

one has to surrender one’s bones

to the sacred earth

to worship the sacred sun

as a seed.

* * *

San Francisco, CA

Excerpt from the NPR article:

The [nano air vehicle]‘s wings are pretty small and like a hummingbird’s they allow it to hover, fly up and down and sideways. The test vehicle is surely not yet a dead ringer for a hummingbird and AeroVironment says the battery life needs to be improved. But, they claim they are on their way to developing a vehicle that will look like a live bird.

Future according to Ray Ray Kurzweil (xtc)

Excerpt from his talk (above):

We ultimately will merge with…technology. It’s already very close to us. … What now fits in our pockets would fit in a blood cell in 25 years. And we will begin to actually deeply influence our health and our intelligence, as we get closer and closer to this technology.

Download this 21-panel comic.

Ellen Degeneres in a swan costume

To save you approximately 96 YouTube fascination hours, I distill for you here one very productive weekend of “research” on Ellen Degeneres:

• “Cranky” Monologue
• Flirting with Sharon Stone
• Meryl Streep (witty and fun)
• Hillary Clinton on gay marriage <– This one was awesome; I think H.C.’s people removed it.

Ellen’s outing could have been a commercially bankrupting rupture of persona — but she’s still game, making positive social impacts as a satirical hero and popular (with all the limitations that entails) queer icon.

Also, see the Dakota Fanning clip (below). Parodic, DADA-esque, and covertly carnivalesque…I read this performer as a diplomat between “ordinary people” and the very startling, absurd weirdness of ordinary people.

Dakota Fanning on Ellen (2004):

And, if you still can’t get enough…here’s her stand-up routine, post- Millenial resurrection.

Ellen Degeneres: The Beginning (2000)

• Part 1: Ellen DeGeneres: The Beginning <– Interpretive dance
• Part 2: Ellen DeGeneres: The Beginning
• Part 3: Ellen DeGeneres: The Beginning
• Part 4: Ellen DeGeneres: The Beginning
• Part 5: Ellen DeGeneres: The Beginning
• Part 6: Ellen DeGeneres: The Beginning
• Part 7: Ellen DeGeneres: The Beginning <– Q&A at end is an unnerving celebrity artifact

A good clown. (I worship at the temples of good clowns.) I also worship here.

Here’s what I took from watching it:

1. Effective leadership in any auditorium can prevent violence. Use it.
2. You can’t lead a nation if you can’t even control an auditorium.
3. Lack of imagination makes brutality possible. Jesus Christ!
4. Lack of leadership makes brutality possible.
5. Paying police more than teachers makes brutality possible.
6. Democratic forums must permit stupidity. Time limits, not tasers.
7. Be ashamed of befuddlement. Do not elect.
8. It is unacceptable to have no response for obvious questions! ???
9. Popular discourse can be improved by popular education.
10. We must cultivate less docile organizational cultures.
11. We talk crowd control, but not often enough of controlled crowds.

The only thing worse than this student’s questions is Kerry’s lack of response, and hundreds of students doing nothing.

Also, here’s Amy Goodman being arrested by police at the 2008 Republican National Convention:

Suppression of free speech and a free press in a free state makes none of the above. Fucking quote me on that.

Here’s Your New World Order:

earth, economics & energy (14)
resources, climate, environment, species, markets, currencies, food supply, budgets, global trade, hunger, weather

law, technology & travel (26)
lawsuits, legislation, citizenship, prisons, research, policing, machines, engineering, drugs, weapons

property, poverty & commerce (104)
corporations, wealth, employment, zoning, displacement, homelessness, entrepreneurship, acquisitions

art, war, & sport (44)
organized combat, spectacle, avant garde, extremism, performance, direct action, documentation, exhibitions, theater

peace, lifestyles & sexuality (36)
families, relationships, sex, violence prevention, conflict resolution, diplomacy, consumption, hobbies, religion

education, organizing & industry (72)
learning, literacy, DIY, networks, labor, sustainability, agriculture, voting, elections, gardens, cultivation, production

mind, body, & soul (66)
health, spirituality, medicine, nutrition, psychology, pregnancy, healing, illness, disease

Highlights:

1. Race, class, gender, and “politics” frameworks applied throughout.
2. Saturday and Sunday are big picture days.
3. Posts might be associated with a maximum of 2 categories…?

Seven Categories (for 7 days of the week):

• Sunday earth, economics & energy (14)
• Monday law, technology & travel (26)
• Tuesday property, poverty & commerce (104)
• Wednesday art, war & sport (44)
• Thursday peace, lifestyles & sexuality (36)
• Friday education, organizing & industry (72)
• Saturday mind, body, & soul (66)

If you use this taxonomy, please let me know! I’m proud of it.

Clifford Shaw’s earliest ecological studies…were modestly optimistic when it came to economic considerations. Yes, competitive forces put urban immigrant groups and other minorities at the bottom of the heap, but many of these people…could work their way up and out to greener pastures. As long as the country and its economy grew, the nastier side effects of the capitalistic order were mitigated. The Depression, however, threw this progressivism into reverse. Now, in 1937, Alinsky urged his colleagues to reexamine their culture-bound assumptions in light of “the present chaos and threatening collapse of the capitalistic system.”

Horwitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel, p.41.

From “Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting for Obama”:

McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, “The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor.” Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.

A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore.

But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.

As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-10/the-conservative-case-for-obama

UC Berkeley Law professor John Yoo, advocate for supreme executive authority, including torture and detainment without charges:

“Maybe during the Cold War we didn’t want to confront all this, because it was happening overseas,” he says. But now, he points out, “national borders are starting to decline, money moves easily, individuals have much more power because of technology.”

This reality is now a permanent part of our lives, he says, and the changes wrought in our world—the easy access to unimaginably powerful technologies (imagine bio-terror, easily engineered viruses, as the fire next time), will dominate the post-Bush years no matter who wins the 2008 election. He foresees a far more powerful presidency, too, as the country grapples with new realities.

http://alumni.berkeley.edu/calmag/200611/hardy2.asp

Slideshow of weekend warrior project

All for the Nookie.

Yup. I grew up eating Kashi and reading Edgar Cayce and in Marin County.

lo-fi

Originally uploaded by dombrassey

in mid-air,
you dream
of returning

to that fire
from which you were flung
at birth—

a tiny spark,
burst outward,
sprung
by a tiny bang.

best of craigslist > toronto > I hate all of you
Originally Posted: Sun, 20 Apr 23:50 EDT
http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/tor/649999147.html

because ultimately arrogance is a hard and alienating edge,
a severance.

the older we get, the more i believe
that bad habits are indeed different

from malicious intent.
( even if the result is the same. )

temper my passion with perspective,
season my boredom with sanctity.

i am starting to understand my life
as a landslide of good fortune.

i brought with me the table
at which you used to sit, in the old house.

( it was the kitchen table of my childhood. )

you sit at it with me;
the things i make come from gratitude.

i miss you so.

please
keep
writing.

–d.

/ˈælfəˌbɛt, -bɪt/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation

a soft woman

lying beside you

in bed

* * *

In light of recent events regarding Bernie Ward, a researcher, activist and radio personality who did investigative reporting on sexual misconduct among Catholic clergy, I write:

and i say all this not because i would like to discourage any person from pursuing a controversial line of inquiry, or because i think that paranoid self-policing is a fun, decolonized and healthy way to live — but because in the best of all possible worlds:

http://dombrassey.com/blog