critical mass

granville_bridge_3298, originally uploaded by doviende.

Critical Mass is not an organized group, rather "happenings" that happen to occur in many cities around the world on a regular basis. Critical Mass bike rides bring awareness to the availability of non-polluting alternatives to cars. They also make pretty obvious the lack of consideration city planners give to any form of getting around that doesn't involve cars. In the 'burbs it's worse yet (see pedestrian).

Tousles with cops are standard fare at these rides, since some traffic snarling tends to happen when large groups of cyclists ride together. (Especially when they're in costume or naked.) There's been lots of attention in NY to the cop who tackled a rider last week. But anyone who has ever attended a ride knows arrests, permanent confiscation of bicycles, and cops roughing up riders are all too common. Hopefully this media moment will get more bicycle activists involved.

All that, and the rides are still joyous events.

spice grrrrlz

Radical Cheerleaders, originally uploaded by ispilledmytea.

Anyone who thinks that activists are dry, boring, unhappy, or talk too much hasn't yet come across Radical Cheerleaders. They show up at demos 'round the world in crazy coordinated outfits and with garbage bag pom poms. They're fat and old and queer and political and raunchy, nothing like your high school cheerleaders*! What's not to love?

As with Food Not Bombs, anyone anywhere can start a Rad Cheerleading troupe, write lyrics, and spice up your neighborhood demo. What are you waiting for?

*I do confess, I have fond memories of my high school's "Mat Maids," the problematic name for the wrestling cheerleaders. They sat at the edge of the mats and pounded out rhythms on the mat with their hands. The chants weren't interesting, but the gals were skilled in pounding out complicated and catchy beats—I was fascinated.

seeing iraq

Some of the photos of the iraq war and the dead that your government doesn't want you to see can be found at zoriah.net.

altered & improved

For the lowdown on billboard and sign improvements (and gorgeous photos!), see

• California Dept. of Corrections
  
• Billboard Liberation Front
  
• Wooster Collective
  
• Streetsy
  
• Culture Jammers Encyclopedia
  
• I Hate Billboards
  
• that photo site

fierce pussy

While we're talking about street tactics and fags and stuff....

It seems I missed the Fierce Pussy book launch and show at Printed Matter!

Fierce Pussy was a early nineties group that came out of ActUp NY, and whose fast and dirty street art warms the heart.

activism on wheels

Erin Davies had a rainbow sticker on her car, which "inspired" someone to vandalize it with spraypaint, writing "fag" and "u r gay." Instead of having it cleaned, she took a road trip in the fagbug to talk about hate crimes, meeting with the lovers and families of murdered queers, talking to high school groups, talking to anyone who was interested or angered.

She had some interesting experiences on the road, with both letters of support and hate mail left under her wipers, her windows being smashed, multiple people trying to clean off the writing themselves, and constant parking issues, since nobody wanted to deal with the slurs.

She's now made a documentary of her trip, and is working on a book. If you're interested, check out more of her story, her photos, and her press coverage on fagbug.com.

all creatures, big and small

So, I work in publishing, for a good little company that puts out social justice titles, many about animal rights. This past weekend I found myself at a conference, once again, hawking books. I ended up hanging out with Rory Freedman, who I've become friends with over the past few years, and who is the powerhouse behind the bestselling book Skinny Bitch (and a followup cookbook). If you're not familiar with Rory or the book, it's animal rights disguised as sassy chick lit slash hard as nails advice about how to live better. She's been on the Today show and Ellen and all kinds of surprising places for a vegan activist. She's pretty and small and healthy and vegan, and that's her schtick.

This is someone I've had heated discussions with about the potential correlation between cilantro haters and those who can't eat spicy food (vs. the rest of us who live for cilantro and heat). People I have idiot conversations with while eating too many samosas are not usually the same people doing the boob tube talk show circuit.

But Rory's made it big, and I think she's done animals a good deed. She hasn't simplified animal rights, it's not a sexist approach (as some have suggested), and she hasn't dumbed it down. Though she's appealing to a Cosmo crowd who care too much about how they look or want to lose weight, that isn't really her thing. The thesis of this book is that beautiful people are compassionate people, good to themselves, to the earth, to other people, to animals. Not that all vegans are skinny (she knows me, right?), or that everyone need fit a certain body type.

So cheers to this hard ass girl from Jersey, doing a bang up job for animals and women. (What woman doesn't benefit from getting out of the animal abuse cycle?) Read this hilarious book, and know that when Rory calls you a whore, she means it lovingly, and when she talks about pus, she's doing it for your own good.

pedestrian

Yesterday, in Newburgh, NY, I saw a man get stopped by the police for walking down the street. Sirens, lights, the works. He was walking on the shoulder of a road at an intersection where 5 years ago there was farmland, and now there are strip malls: "essential" things like B&Ns, Lowe's, Mobil stations, Chili's. It was illegal for him to be walking down this road because there is no sidewalk (like most roads these days), and, I'm guessing here, because it is considered a highway by the town of Newburgh. On an already hot and sweaty afternoon, in a landscape covered with black asphalt, this man wasn't allowed to walk home from work. (The Talking Heads song Nothing But Flowers comes to mind here.)

I was flabbergasted, and feel that, for me, this felt like the beginning of the end. I saw all this happen from a car, no surprise, but was so horrified, it makes me want to want to walk and ride my bike exclusively. I'm so repulsed by a culture that makes it illegal to walk in this place that has so recently been taken away from people, and handed to corporations. Sickened by this class crap, that tries to require people to have cars by not funding public transportation.

I'm inspired to give my friend John Francis, of the organization Planetwalk and the book Planetwalker, another read. John didn't ride in cars for twenty-two years to protest oil industry abuses, and has many an interesting story to tell from his journeys. And, bonus, he's another banjo player!

bloc

blockades, originally uploaded by abovegroundpool.

Sometimes there's an emergency, and your only choice is to form a blockade. This can be done using trees, boats, tubes, barrels, locks, sticks, wheelchairs, tripods, and bodies bodies bodies.

propaganda

Behold Josh Macphee of the organization Just Seeds and books Stencil Pirates, Reproduce & Revolt, and Realizing the Impossible (discussed here).

Forgive the wonky photography.

These two lovlies were purchased by a friend at an art auction fundraiser for political prisoner Daniel McGowan a couple of years ago. I love the suggestion of 50's suburban domestic life and of Christian propaganda mixed with anarchist politics.

the sound of long island

Ran away camping and to the beach for a few days, which was wonderful and relaxing. There's always something to jar you out the peacefulness, however, whether it be another camper killing squirrels and birds with a bb gun in the campground (right there, in a state park!), fisherpeople hooking and killing fish, and leaving their hooks and line lying around to injure anyone else who comes by, or people removing rocks from the beach by the barrel full (are they selling them to Pier 1?).

Checking out the area yielded some charm, and we stumbled upon two of those old structures that are shaped like what they sell. The first was a duck, thankfully now selling trinkets instead of ducks and eggs, and the second, the more benign ear of corn. People on Long Island take their gardens seriously, and there were many, many beautiful outdoor spaces. There was the pleasure of living simply for a few days. And, of course, there was the never ending lulling of the beautiful ocean.

safe for whites

Created for The Unapologetic Mexican by Joaquìn Ramòn Herrera

happy as pigs in straw

Pigs who've been swimming in the midwest floodwaters are desperate for a dry place to rest. That's why, after needing to lay on the floor after seeing images of pigs swimming and drowning in the midwest floods, I'm relieved to see the "after" pictures coming from Farm Sanctuary. If you, like me, are grateful to those who get in there and do something when animals escape from factory farms, struggle to overcome natural disasters, and then are shot on levees or captured and sent to slaughter houses, you'll be thrilled to look at the midwest flood pig rescue blog. They need safe pig homes and $, if you have either of those things available.

free the new jersey 4

If the recent flurry of gay weddings has you thinking that queers have it all cushy and nice, familiarize yourself with the case of the New Jersey 4, and do some support work for these young women.

• Article from Workers World
  
• Free NJ4 events & artwork
  
• Interview with Terrain Dandridge
  
• Excellent coverage on Women's Space (with photos)
  
• More Stabbings, Please
  
• My initial reaction: bash back

fireworks or war?

This image (from ayres no graces') is sortof how I feel about fireworks. I'm sortof scared of them, freaked out by all the war noise, which, when we're honest, is what they're meant to evoke (see The Unapologetic Mexican). Most years I'm paranoid or grouchy or both, and lock my scared cats up in the house with my scaredy cat self during fireworks. Read this hilarious post on tiny cat pants about a fireworks accident this year, which made me feel sane for hiding out. (Wait, or is it the drunk straight people I'm hiding from?) Anyway, ran into this bit from last year when, apparently, I was feeling bolder:

Almost two decades ago I took a marine biology class that field-tripped to Puerto Penasco, Sonora, Mexico to spend our days gazing into tide pools. That is where I learned about bioluminescent animals and organisms, and that those organisms are why the ocean sparkles at night. Standing by a bonfire on the beach looking at the night water, the smallest beings creating such vast beauty had a big impact on me. The ocean can sparkle on its own, with no moon.

I thought about it this week when I visited my CSA's distribution pretty late in the evening. The dense show of fireflies over the fields was absolutely stunning, second only to one summer evening I spent in a field thick with fireflies in the mountains of North Carolina. My insistence on comparing the view to laser light shows (events usually accompanied by Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon") made me laugh at myself. It is so beautiful and fascinating that I'm only able to absorb the information by comparing it to something much flatter, and made by humans.

Growing up in the sunset-rich Sonoran desert, I'm familiar with this absorption issue: Visitors almost always look at the spectacular sunsets for 10 seconds, take a picture, and spend hours looking at the photographic image of that sunset.

This weekend also came with holiday fireworks. I think that because of the fireflies, I was more open to the fireworks this year. Instead of looking and sounding to me like a simulation of war, I was reminded more of fairy dust and making wishes by blowing on dandelions. I saw a woman wearing sparkling lotion over her whole face and her hair and neck and clothes. Though I don't think I'll be purchasing any of this lotion, I understand the desire to glitter. Who wouldn't want to be a part of the world of the fireflies, the world of the ocean organisms, and be able to shine instead of just reflect?

gay marriage

While "the gays" have been celebrating in California, I've been mum on gay marriage. That's because I'm not into it. I like ritual sometimes, I like queers being committed to one another (monogamous or no), and I get warm fuzzies when I hear about those couples who've been together for 60 or so years.

But in my mind marriage is a stopgap. It might get a couple of queers health insurance. But shouldn't we all have healthcare, whether we're in relationships or not? It may help a queer or two not lose their child or their home when their lover dies. But that really hasn't been tested yet, has it?

Gay marriage doesn't solve our problems. And when everyone's atwitter & aglow over their new right to marry, I feel like a jerk pointing out those problems. My co-worker reinforced that feeling this week when he quoted a gay man as hanging his head and saying "I miss having something to be angry about."

Sorry ya'll. I like a party as much as the next one, but that's no reason to invite the government to regulate my relationships, no reason to invoke old institutions that secure property. My dear old friend mattilda bernstein sycamore always comes to the rescue when I am without words, and I stumbled on this Alternet post from mattilda today. It's not just about wanting to be different.

I'm not going to spend my time fighting against gay marriage. I still haven't recovered from a late eighties gay rodeo protest where our signage (as queers against animal abuse in rodeos) wasn't clear enough, and the local paper clumped us with the protesting Christians. Still, I would like to be able to give a clear answer when people ask me about it, or assume I'm on the bandwagon fighting for my right to marry.

P.S. As unattractive as it may be to some, I'm still angry. Remember Sakia Gunn?
P.P.S. Image courtesy of Gay Shame SF.

jesse helms dead

For a queer artist of my era who is pro-choice, vehemently anti-racist, and has done of lot of AIDS activism, the death of Jesse Helms has an impact. When Reagan died the media immediately forgot his (many) sins, and focused on his charm, how loved he was. It may be tempting to go there when someone dies, but both Reagan and Helms unapologetically ruined the lives of many, many people, and are responsible for the horrible deaths of many more. When Reagan died, little shrines celebrating his death popped up around NYC, and I couldn't help but be grateful for them. The collective memory loss was too horrible without something countering it. I'm not celebrating the death of a toddering old man, but I am happy about the end of the influence of one BIG white supremacist in the U.S. Goodbye, Jesse, and good riddance.