Past Tense

It feels crazy to talk about Fed Up Queers so completely in the past tense, like those were the glory days, and they're so over. But the facts are that I now live in the burbs and am surrounded by mostly heterosexual people, rarely get to do any street activism, and don't have a go-to group of people to make noise with.

I get riled up when people talk about how all of FUQ's drama was because all of us dykes were sleeping together. Sure, there was some of that, but a lot of the drama was an entirely different kind of passion. We cared about our message. We cared about what was right. We cared about making a difference, rattling people's comfort with the horrible things happening in NYC. And it felt fantastic. Exhausting too, but exhilarating to be part of a group that spent every week fighting for what mattered. Not all of our decisions were on target, and we spent a lot of time just spraypainting messages, which also meant a lot of time running from the police. But we also were in the thick of it. We got 10,000 people to show up for a demo in just four days, we got the Diallo protests rolling, we drew attention to every tranny murdered in NYC, Giuliani and his people knew who we were and knew they could expect us to cause him trouble wherever he went. I remember how it felt hearing "Fed Up Queers" on the radio, and on the tv news. The group drove me insane, and I loved them dearly. I remember how it felt when the whole thing fell apart because one person wanted to promote "inter-generational sex" as some radical cause, and all the dykes who'd suffered sexual abuse couldn't stop crying, and we couldn't get him to leave, and so we folded. I remember how angry I felt, and powerless. FUQ had been my power, and it was being taken away by a sexual predator. The whole thing made me mute. How typical.

I wasn't vegan then. I mean, I had been vegan for years and years, but then, when I moved East, it eventually fell away because I didn't know anyone who did animal rights. I was broke and depressed and dealing with massive police brutality in my little town. My head was elsewhere. When I moved to Brooklyn and met other queer activists and eventually became this powerful little gang called Fed Up Queers, I felt like my brain finally un-numbed, and I started to remember things that mattered to me. I remembered them in detail.

When FUQ was infiltrated and our actions started to fail, when we would get arrested before our actions had gone down, we decided to go to a skillshare in the swamp to learn some new tactics. We sold a bunch of "Brooklyn Out of Palestine" t-shirts to fund the trip, and it was there I went vegan again. The whole gathering was vegetarian, and really mostly vegan. My girlfriend and I had decided to spend the three weeks there eating vegan, dabbling with making the commitment while someone else was preparing the food.

Learning to climb was hard for me. Some of our gang took to it like monkeys, understood the physics, learned the knots easily, just excelled. It was slower for me: I had more weight to haul up that rope, was insanely scared of heights, terrible at math. I made it to the top of the scaffolding, but had a breakdown up there before I could come down. I was grateful to meditate with a group at the camp, felt it helped even though it felt funny, self-indulgent.

Then the fights started. Two guys who were too good to camp with us and were staying in hotels decided that the camp being vegetarian was racist. The whole production shut down, hundreds of people in multiple workshops, everyone stopped everything to discuss meat eating and race. No matter that indigenous Brazilians talked about cattle production destroying their land, no matter that indigenous Canadians talked about how, although they weren't vegetarian, that factory farms were against everything they believed in. No matter that people of every color, veg and not, talked about how the camp's basis in environmental activism required that it be vegetarian. Everything stopped to let two guys (whose favorite word was maricon) talk about how they'd lose their culture if they didn't eat meat. And they did eat meat, brought in styrofoam containers from a deli every day.

For fear of being called racist, the camp ceased being vegetarian, the (Iranian) director quit, the kitchen staff quit, and everyone went home having learned half of what they intended to learn. But my girlfriend and I were vehemently vegan from then on, having so many people to make up for.

The camp fell apart, and, despite our best efforts, FUQ fell apart too. I stayed friends with those queers, and sometimes did activism with some of them. All but the sexual predator, and the one woman who supported him and who I ceased to trust. None of them ever trusted our care for animals, either, always thinking "there are more important things" and forgetting that there are many things all at once.

I read a friend's writing about FUQ and about seeing Le Tigre in the 90's in a tiny space in Brooklyn and how we were all freezing and about an action in Central Park in the Ramble when gay men where getting arrested there. And I can tell that she hasn't felt that exhilaration since, that momentum, that belief that anything can happen. And that makes me sad. We've given power over to that child molester, to that infiltrator, to those silly men who think they'd lose themselves by not eating meat. We've gone silent.

zapatista agave syrup

Well, it's not agave, it's honey, but oh how I wish it were.

Some of my friends are very different from me. I saw this honey reviewed on a friend's blog. She's fabulous: brilliant, hilarious, wears full-on party dresses in the daytime, and left corporate land to go to chef school years back. I don't follow her blog because the things I find there upset me. (Her profile lists "butchering" as one of her specialties.) But I got all happy over this, even though I know those bees were blow-torched. I know. I know! The idea of supporting rebel cooperatives by buying their [fair trade] products is alluring, plus the masked activist on the label has a whole 'nother kind of allure. Fer real...their logo is a balaclava. Yes, product marketing has an impact on me.

Alas, I'll settle for the [vegan] Palestinian olive oil from Rebel Imports. (When I can't support lesbo Palestinians Aswat by buying their oil, this is good backup.)

P.S. Many food type postlets have moved over to wintergreens. This stayed because, although interesting, is sooo not local. The multiple locations are making me a bit schizophrenic, but that's just the way.

the value of archives

I sat shiva for a friend's father this week, and was once again reminded of the importance of activist archives. The man who died had been part of the armed resistance against the Nazis in World War II, but many people there mourning hadn't heard of partisans, or at least not until James Bond played a role remarkably similar to the life of Simon Trakinski in a little movie called Defiance. I remember visiting Polish ghetto sites and concentration camps and being shocked to learn of the many rebellions, escapes, and armed uprisings. My education about Nazis and concentration camps had always only represented defeated, bewildered victims.

Fortunately, an archivist has been hard at work documenting the Jewish Partisans (blowing up railway lines!), and recording the stories of those still living.

Other valuable archives include:

• Active Stills documents Palestine and Israel on a daily basis;
  
• Direct Action Wiki provides information on (what else?) the tactics of direct action;
  
• The Lesbian Herstory Archives have anything and everything you need to know about dyke activism;
  
• ahem! ahem! abovegroundpool activist archive, to which you should submit photos, videos, and information regarding your saboteur activities, fighting back, or creating new possibilities.

flags

Flags are always a potent symbol (although the semaphore flags look an awful lot like a Swatch watch I had in my teen years): Pellegrino Ritter, a sixth grade student, Queers for Palestine, Daniel Buren, resistance against the U.S. mission in Havana and Adbusters.

free tibet

On Friday night I stumbled across a Free Tibet demo in Union Square, that looked much like this one. I first noticed it (from blocks away) because of the chanting. As I got closer I saw that the whole plaza was filled with candlelight spelling out "Martyrs 49th day, Free Tibet."

The scene was completely mesmerizing, with the group chanting, the candlelight, and the whole group seated with multiples of signs about the Olympics and the continued torture of Tibetans. There was also a table stacked with fruit and incense and cakes, to honor the rituals that have not been allowed to be practiced by Tibetans in Tibet.

Not to downplay the seriousness of the issues being addressed by this demonstration, I have to say that this group knows how to make an impact with a demonstration. Visually beautifully, the chanting acting as a pull, and cake to boot.

The controversy over this years' Olympics is making me reflect on the many, many demonstrations of Olympics past and future: Black Power, Indigenous Land Rights, Palestinian prisoners, and much much more.