verdict

The Sean Bell verdict came back this week: cops can use whatever amount of force they like against unarmed people. Murder, when committed by a police officer, is not murder. The police department is considering action, which generally, in these cases, means that these officers will get an extended paid leave.

killed by NYPD, originally uploaded by abovegroundpool.

caught cutting

I read a lot of mediocre books, which makes me even more picky and critical of the good ones. When a book actually surprises and inspires me, I'm all that much more excited.

AK Press is an important cooperative press running out of Oakland, and you should support them. Last year they published another book by political art boy wonder Josh MacPhee called Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority. I didn't love everything in this book, but I was oh so grateful to have access to information and images contained within. It was part of the inspiration for starting the abovegroundpool free activist archive. I'm always on the search for interesting political work, or images of the activism taking place around the world. [Current obsession: the rich history of Olympic protest.]

And I chose this page of the book to show a sample of, because it made me laugh out loud. There I am, cutting my own hair, both proud of being self-sufficient, and a little embarrassed by the resulting chops and my lack of willingness to leave it up to the professionals.

The point is this: there is a rich history to activist art. This book helps us begin to track it.

martha rosler and wack!

This image is part of large series of work called "Bringing the War Home" made by Martha Rosler. She started making these photo montages in 1967, and they're perfectly relevant today.

Martha was one of my professors, always with food in her hair and raving about an offensive commerical or a pbs special she'd seen about documentary film, or how toxic her neighborhood (Greenpoint) in Brooklyn was/is. She was then, and is now, a serious and important political artist—someone who always makes you think and rethink. Her involvement in the anti-war movement and feminist movements are only a small part of her story.

You can see some of Martha's historical work at P.S. 1, along with a school-full of important feminist art from WACK!.

bang bang

Closing arguments were given yesterday in the Sean Bell case: "The three police officers on trial for killing a 23-year-old man on his wedding day behaved appropriately." It is looking like police officers who poured 50 bullets into Sean Bell and his friends, all unarmed black men, are going to be found not guilty, just like the officers in the murders of unarmed black men Patrick Dorismond and Amadou Diallo.

The NYPD and the NYC "justice" system should continue to be challenged. Consider listening to Le Tigre's Bang Bang during your action planning meeting....

Or support:

• October 22nd Coalition
  
• Human Rights Watch
  
• Cop Watch

scorch

I first saw Willie Cole's work 15 or so years ago at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the iron images have stuck with me. Without having heard a thing about him since, or seeing recent work, I recently recommended that a friend look him up. And ran and looked him up again myself.

Anything transformed by fire or extreme heat is interesting, but when a burn references slave ships, masks, domestic labor, and scarification, it's a pretty interesting burn.

wallpapermaker

I'm not making anything useful yet. Wallpaper isn't the single most practical thing in the world, but its a step closer. For career #46, I'd like to be a wallpapermaker.

And when I am, the first pattern I will make will be of fig leaves.

power of song

This weekend I watched a documentary on Pete Seeger called The Power of Song. I'm interested in Pete for a few reasons:

• He is my town's local celebrity and performs at important town events, like the Strawberry Festival, the Corn Festival, and the Pumpkin Festival;
• He's participated in peace movements for many of his 88 years;
• He's had a big role in the fight to clean up the Hudson River, and I've enjoyed going sailing on Beacon Sloop Club's sailboat, the Woody Guthrie;
• I'm way into banjos (and harmonicas, which are less relevant here); and
• My mother has been belting out the song "Good Night, Irene" for as long as I can remember.

I learned of Pete a couple of decades ago when he performed at an Angela Davis talk. There weren't a lot of factoids in the film that I hadn't learned since that event, but it was interesting to see footage of Pete's testimony in front the House Un-American Activities Committee, as well as lots of banjo strumming. Funny enough, what the film did give me was permission to make artwork.

I do believe that art, music, dance, and poetry are necessary. But for some reason, I've always felt guilty about wanting to spend time making objects meant just for looking. It seems like wasted time. I feel I should be growing food, making tools, something functional, necessary to every day. I have dreams where my trade is fashioning hinges and latches. Then I read Muriel Rukeyser's writing about the role of poetry in getting to the essence of one's life, in remembering. Or Richard Shelton's writing about the psychologically freeing impact of creative writing programs in prisons. These accounts, like the story of Pete Seeger's life, make me know that the value of art is true.

So here's another reason to be interested in Pete Seeger: He reminds me of the power of song, of dance, of beauty. It always has a function.

birth

The senior member of my queer family, my friend, died this winter. While I'm crawling around looking for buds or other signs of early spring, two baby girls, twins, were born into that family. They're so tiny, still, as to barely have caused a ripple; tiny squirrels, a few pounds, wrapped like burritos.

The missing I have for Bob Kohler aches more with the appearance of these tiny girls. He would have had something to say about their birth. He may have been grouchy about queers feeling a need to have kids. But I bet a nickel he would have been interested in them, felt tender, wondered what good parts of each of us their presence might reveal.

Bob had many careers, one of which was running a store. The Loft was on Christopher Street, the "gay strip" of New York's West Village, where Bob also lived for 50 of his 81 years. He fought for queers, for kids, for animals, for people of color, for the homeless, for the HIV+ and disenfranchised people of all sorts for all of those years. The Loft had a sign that Bob liked to reminisce about. It said, "straights welcome, if they behave." It's funny, but he was serious about the store being a sanctuary, safe for the queerest of the queer. That it be theirs. Ours.

I birth abovegroundpool in Bob's activist spirit. I picture him at the helm in his New Year's sequined vest. Fabulous.