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^^^ June 24, 2004    Why Don’t Greens for Kerry Work with Democrats for Nader?

[Richard]
Recently I got a somewhat annoying message on that lefty list, Storming Heaven... Obviously a spam, it was written by a group that calls itself “Greens for Kerry.” The message reads:

I want to let you know about a grassroots campaign that was just launched called "Greens for Kerry" (GFK). The project urged [sic] Greens and former Nader voters in swing states to unite with [Democrats] to defeat Bush by voting for John Kerry.

The message goes on to make the usual statements about how important it is to defeat Bush because he is such a danger to the world (although supposedly it isn’t a danger to the world to vote for someone else who defends every “free trade” agreement and supports the PATRIOT Act and increasing the war effort in Iraq, and who goes around championing the idea of using futuristic pain beams against protesters). At any rate, without weighing the pros and cons of supporting Kerry as someone whose government might be just slightly less dangerous and harmful than Bush’s (or maybe not), I decided, simply, to address the logic of the GFK message. And that’s why I posted the following statement:

I want to let you know about a grassroots campaign that was just launched called "Democrats for Nader" (DFN). The project urges Democrats, especially former Kucinich or Sharpton supporters, in NON-swing states to unite with other liberals, Greens, progressives, and socialists to register a visible opposition at the polls on Election Day.

I am kind of wondering if the same people who are urging Greens to vote for Kerry in swing states would also be willing to make the effort to urge more people in NON-swing states to vote for Nader. If these people really do actually favor the Nader and/or Green outlook and agenda and are not supporters of Kerry except as a tactic to defeat Bush, then why don't they balance out the GFK by supporting a sort of DFN? If the whole issue is tactics and numbers and they are so certain that the polls accurately reflect what will likely happen on Election Day, then they should want to increase support for Nader where it’s "safe" so that their support for Kerry in the swing states doesn’t register as an electoral rejection of any viewpoint that opposes the shared Bush/Kerry policies. Of course, it might seem a little unprincipled somehow to support a candidate in one place while you oppose him somewhere else, but if they're out campaigning for someone whom they don't actually agree with or believe in anyway, then we should assume that they've already rejected the above-mentioned principles, at least to some degree. At any rate, it would seem like a logical idea to me -- more logical than most of the ideas I'm seeing coming out of the Anybody But Bush/Oh, No, Nader Will Spoil Everything camp.

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^^^ June 21, 2004    Hell Is Other People ("Happy" Birthday, Jean-Paul Sartre)

[Richard]
Thank you to Wood's Lot for reminding me that today is the birthday of Jean-Paul Sartre, born June 21, 1905. I couldn't sleep this morning (stomach wasn't feeling so well), so I began to peruse Sartre Online. I have to say, this is really fascinating stuff. I think I'm going to pick my copy of Nausea off the bookshelf and reread it cover to cover after something like 20 years. (I have re-read bits and pieces of it now and then over the years...) I'm also going to collect all the great Sartre quotes that I'm seeing (the title of this post being one of them). And then, maybe I'll tackle some of his other books. I'd like to delve more into his philosophy but am also very interested in his politics, especially from later in his life (the 1968 Paris uprising, etc.).

I was feeling pretty crappy this morning, but now that I'm reading all this Sartre, I'm beginning to cheer up.

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^^^ June 20, 2004         Crushes

[asfo_del]
Crushes are almost invariably treated as silly and ridiculous. And they certainly have a lot of inexplicable, irrational, and often ridiculous traits, like all obsessions that are not shared by others. Other people who could not possibly be expected to understand them in any rational sense. Even an obsession that is our own seems absurd after we're finished obsessing about it; yet at the time it was all-consuming.

I think the most important reason why crushes are so scorned is that they are considered the purview of girls, usually very young girls and women in their early teens. And we all know how silly those little girls are, what with their love of candy-colored handbags and fruit flavored make-up. Well, damn! If you like Hello Kitty and scented lip gloss, you should be able to embrace those things without being snickered at. [I've actually always hated that stuff, but that's no reason for me to stand in judgment. I'm sure I've liked plenty of other equally unacceptable cultural clutter.] And if you're in love, even in that pitiable and heartbreaking love that is unacknowledged and unrequited, why should that be a source of shame? The literature, music, and film canon is full of stories of plucky boys who go after the girl/woman of their dreams, and even where they don't succeed, they are still heroic figures. A girl who does the same is sad and embarrassing.

Crushes are associated with the very young because it doesn't take long for most of us to wise up and not openly admit that we have a crush once we're past about sixteen. I've known a couple of very outspoken women in their thirties and late twenties who were not so coy. These were strong, brash women [punk rockers, as a matter of fact] who were open about being reduced to jelly at the thought of a particular guy. Some of their actions were downright nonsensical, like spending every night at the bar where the love interest drank, ignoring him the entire time [except to threaten any women who came near him], only to come home to spend hours reading elaborate meanings into every one of his words and gestures.

Many of us do equally absurd things in response to our obsessive crushes, but we usually go underground. We make stuff up. We ascribe meaning to random, pointless facts we might uncover about him, like where his mother works, or the fact that one of his bounced checks is taped to the wall at the local pizzeria. We may feel terribly foolish and ridiculous, but that doesn't help us to stop thinking about him constantly. Or we may just give in to our foolishness and enjoy making up implausible stories about him, which are an oddly comforting counterpoint to the inescapable ache and longing.

Having a crush is far from silly. It's an emotional and physical firestorm. We are girls, and this, apparently, is how we experience love and desire. We fall madly, desperately, and crazily in love, often with the most unsuitable partners imaginable, and we obsessively pine for them. We embarrass ourselves. We act and even think like idiots. So what of it? You know what, fuck you.... We'll write the name of the object of our desire over and over on page after page of notebook paper; we'll learn his bus route and the name of his dog; we'll notice how he stands and how he walks; and wonder every day if when we see him next he's going to be wearing that shirt that makes him look so hot and so vulnerable at the same time. And we'll be damn proud of being silly, stupid girls, thank you very much!

When I was kid, my next youngest cousin [on my mother's side] was eight years older than I was. He was surprisingly good-humored about being expected to entertain two little girls -- my sister and me -- whenever we visited. He wowed us with hilarious impressions of Topo Gigio and stunts like dangling off the balcony and lowering himself into the garden below. He was a troublemaker, an imp, a lousy student. He was held up to me as an example of what not to be. [He's now 48 and a wealthy businessman.] But I thought he was everything I wanted to be and was so hopelessly not. My crushes were not just boys I wanted to be with, they were who I wanted to be: not a boy, but someone who is loud and unafraid.

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^^^ June 19, 2004    Five Years Ago Yesterday

[Richard]
In line with my tradition of observing anniversaries one day late... Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the June 18 Global Day of Action against capitalism, the first of the big global anti-capitalist, anti-"globalization" protests in the Global North. I would have mentioned this yesterday, but I had to run off last night to do a proofreading job for global capitalism. (Oh, well.)

June 18 was an interesting day in many places around the globe. There was a big and very active protest in the UK, thanks to the efforts of Reclaim the Streets. People went wild in Oregon, presaging the great WTO protest in Seattle on November 30, 1999. In New York City, after much talk about "taking over" Wall Street, a few hundred people connected to Reclaim the Streets gathered in the park at Liberty Plaza, walked a block or two, got stopped by the police, and either got arrested or managed to get away. I did the latter, but this was the first of several nights over the next few years when I would spend hours investigating the fate of good friends who were in jail. (I don't think I did the jail support vigil thing that night -- that would happen later in the year, after the RTS protest on November 26.) Anyway, forgive me for being nostalgic -- even if here in New York City, June 18, 1999 wasn't exactly something to be nostalgic about, except that it was the beginning of...something for many of us.

In the spring issue of the magazine Perspectives on Anarchist Theory (published by the Institute for Anarchist Studies), there is an interesting article, The Life -- or Death -- of the Anti-Globalization Movement, by Marina Sitrin (life) and Chuck Morse (death). Generally, although I might add some things to this perspective (some other time...), I agree with Chuck Morse.

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^^^ June 17, 2004    My Top 20 (sort of) of the Past 30 Years

[Richard]
Now, I'm going to be the one making lists... I guess ChuckO's top 20 albums (over at Monumental Mistake) provoked me to do this; or, blame it on asfo_del's excellent post on punk (and the comments that it inspired)... Actually, I've been wanting to do this for a while. Maybe it's the annoying old rock critic in me that simply refuses to die...

I'm going to be lazy and avoid adding links or descriptions at the moment. I might provide links at some future time (although I've already provided links and explanations for some of these -- see, especially, our November archive). I'm also going to avoid going back more than 30 years (or 30 years and one month, since I've decided to include the incredible Bowie album Diamond Dogs, which came out in May of 1974). I'm not sure if I'm doing that because '74 was about the time when I, myself, started to become an adolescent (and therefore especially rock 'n' roll susceptible) or because it would simply be too complicated to contemplate all the popular music of the 1960s and '50s.

I sent an earlier version of this list to ChuckO (as a response to his list), but I've changed a couple of items after thinking more carefully about which albums I actually enjoy and listen to the most. I regret that this list might have certain obvious limitations -- though it's not because I'm turned off by other things (for instance, I really like a lot of the hip-hop I've heard in passing, from people's home stereos, cars, etc.); probably, it's more a matter of not being up to doing all the work necessary to learn about stuff that I can't find or acquire so easily these days. (I think this is a major reason -- rather than traditional prejudice -- why a lot of people keep within certain areas of taste, which may or may not be connected to specific cultures, age, race, or ethnicity.) Ironically, since I can't stand listening to commercial radio, I probably would have to do a lot of work to learn about the stuff that's popular now, while many of my own faves might seem to some people like bizarre obscurities. And one other odd thing that people might notice is that my list is almost completely split between the 1970s and the 1990s -- which kind of shows what I generally think about the music and culture of the 1980s.

Anyway, here's the list -- which probably omits things that I'll think of tomorrow or next week -- which is also in no particular order, by the way...

1. Ministry -- Psalm 69
2. Ramones -- Ramones
3. Natacha Atlas -- Gedida
4. Dead Can Dance -- Within the Realm of a Dying Sun
5. Public Image Limited -- Second Edition
6. Sex Pistols -- Never Mind the Bullocks...
7. David Bowie -- Diamond Dogs
8. Dillinger -- CB 200
9. Crass -- Feeding of the 5000
10. Wire -- Pink Flag
11. Patti Smith -- Radio Ethiopia
12. Blondie -- Blondie
13. Transglobal Underground -- Dream of 100 Nations
14. Miranda Sex Garden -- Suspiria
15. Orbital -- Orbital 2
16. Saint Etienne -- Tiger Bay
17. Black Tape for a Blue Girl -- As One Aflame Laid Bare by Desire
18. Brian Eno -- Another Green World
19. X -- Wild Gift
20. Fun'Da'Mental -- Seize the Time

[P.S. I confess, I just switched some things on the list after posting it -- I edited it overnight. (Is that cheating in Blogland?) How can anybody draw up a list like this and stick with it? Well, from this point on, I'll try...]

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^^^ June 17, 2004         Photos of Favelas

[asfo_del]
Found via The Common Man, photos of Brazilian favelas (urban squatter settlements).

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^^^ June 17, 2004         Ten Million Children Work as Domestic Slaves

[asfo_del]
According to a report issued last week, on the eve of the third World Day Against Child Labour, by the International Labor Office of the United Nations, as many as ten million children, and perhaps more, most of them girls, some as young as 8, work as domestic servants in conditions of near or absolute slavery, often in households where having servants is seen as indication of high social status. Because they work behind closed doors, out of public view, these children are especially at risk for exploitation and abuse, including sexual abuse.

"Millions of children work night and day outside of their family homes, toiling as domestic child labourers. Nearly all are exploited, exposed to hazardous work and subject to abuse…this must stop now," says ILO Director-General Juan Somavia.

The report estimates that children working as domestic laborers number 700,000 in Indonesia, 559,000 in Brazil, 250,000 in Haiti, 264,000 in Pakistan, 200,000 in Kenya and 100,000 in Sri Lanka. Ten per cent of child laborers in Haiti were under 10 years of age and 70 per cent in Morocco were under 12.

Worldwide, there are over 200 million children working.

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^^^ June 15, 2004         How Punk Rock Didn't Save My Life

[asfo_del]
Punk rock has a strangely deep emotional and personal meaning to the people who love it that is almost completely impossible to explain to anyone who does not. To those who don't love it, punk rock sounds like loud, angry thrashing that is indistinguishable from other loud and aggressive music genres, genres which have their fans too but generally don't elicit such glazed-eyed, pure love.

Searching the web, it isn't hard to find paeans to punk rock.

This one, from ex-lion tamer, and this one, from punk rock academy, explain the personal significance of punk much more eloquently than I could. My own relationship to punk rock has been more like pining for an unrequited love: a sweet but heartbreaking desire for something beautiful, heady, sweaty and gut wrenching that is somehow just outside my reach.

Punk rock to me is just like that guy that you have a mad crush on, who is brash, loud, smart, beautiful and sweet but who is so distant from your own life and experience that even if you had the guts to approach him you would have no idea what to say -- and he has absolutely no idea that you're there. So you resort to following him around, making up stories about what he does all day and what he thinks about and who his friends and lovers are, and as much as it hurts that you can't be with him it is somehow comforting to know that he's there, that he's a part of your life even if it's only in your fantasies, and it's bittersweet, not terrible, that you're desperately in love with him. [I have more to say about crushes but I'll save that for another time.]

Listening to punk rock is a giddy, exhilarating experience, but it builds up a level of energy that, for me, has nowhere to go. Ultimately, it leaves me exhausted and defeated, but at the same time it creates such a wonderful feeling while the music is actually playing that I keep going back for more. Being at a live show is that same feeling, times twenty. And then, after the show, as the Italian punk band I Fichissimi once said, everyone goes back to their own lives of shit. After having been set on fire by punk rock, I end up feeling more displaced, more maladjusted than before, when without it I could have at least tolerated my life of shit as a seamless continuum, without having tasted such a sharp and delicious contrast to it.

I thought I would try to resist blaming gender and age as a reason for feeling excluded from punk, but that really is impossible. Although I loved the Dead Kennedys when I was about 19, and would play my boyfriend's DK records obsessively, over and over, when nobody else was home, even then I never would have admitted to anyone that I liked the Dead Kennedys. It would have seemed like a bold-faced lie, a sad attempt to make myself seem cool, which I was so obviously not. And in any case, my interest in punk rock didn't go any further than that at the time. [I think even I believed that it wasn't proper, that I would be somehow overstepping the bounds of who people thought I was if I actually embraced punk.] When I really fell head over heels in love with punk rock I was 30.

Even if I had been interested in dyeing my hair and sewing band patches onto my clothes, what an absurd thing that would have been. I didn't know any punks. Who would I have done it for? For myself, so I could feel even more alienated from my daily surroundings? I would walk into the store where I worked, an upscale greeting card and stationery boutique, after having just turned off The Pist, which I blasted in my car on the way to work, and feel like killing the pedantic society ladies who complained to me that the invitations they were looking for were lavender, and all we had was mauve. It was hard enough dealing with the bullshit: creating a chasm of differing perception and values between myself and the day-to-day I had to exist in only made it that much harder to live.

Everything that was not punk rock seemed somehow pale and disappointing, at best, or smug, fake, and dishonest, at worst. But how can punk rock rescue you from all of that when it's just a type of music? Yes, a music that also carries with it a wonderful life philosophy of doing it yourself, of empowerment, of telling the truth even if it's ugly or stupid, of rejecting the falsehoods of commercialism and self obsession that the rest of society is saturated with, of dealing with people with a forthright honesty, but when you're alone with these ideals, what do you do with them except guard them as a treasure that only you know about, that you can't share with anyone who is not a fellow punk rock nerd because if you did they would only think, cynically, that you are full of shit?

I was not a member of the punk scene. It really had no room for me, no one I could be friends with or relate to. Virtually all the punks were boys in their late teens and very early twenties. [Although I nearly always went to shows by myself, I once brought along a woman friend to a pop-punk show. When she found herself surrounded by sweaty, some shirtless, thrashing 19-year-old boys, she whispered to me, "I think I've died and gone to heaven."] Punk shows in Houston were very friendly, and I never felt inappropriate or unwanted, but there was no question that I was apart. I tried to learn to play the guitar, not so I could be in a band but because I thought it would be great to be able to play the music, and I was simply unable to learn to play, which was kind of baffling. Granted, I have no musical aptitude, but I didn't think it would be impossible.

When I was in high school, the kind of music that was on the radio was what I like to refer to as the "Dukes of Hazzard aesthetic:" Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Doobie Brothers, Steve Miller Band, stuff like that. I didn't think it was completely awful, but it was about as far away as anything could be from speaking to me. In spite of my brief interest in the DKs in college, I didn't really know that underground music existed. I hated the pretentious, self-satisfied, and arty rock of the eighties. It wasn't until Nirvana that something surfaced in mainstream music that grabbed me by the throat. Listening to Kurt Cobain's voice was like listening to someone I knew intimately. When he died, I was devastated. I couldn't believe I had been so cavalier, taking him and his music for granted. I had never even bothered to go see Nirvana play live. I swore to myself that I would not be so clueless and stupid again.

It's not a little embarrassing to admit that I love Green Day, but I do. It's like punk rock drenched in caramel. Like when you open up a jar of thick, sugary strawberry jam and it makes the back of your throat tingle. Green Day was my gateway drug into punk.

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^^^ June 15, 2004         I'm Not an Anarchist

[asfo_del]
At the risk of alienating a majority of our small readership, I will say that I am not an anarchist. This is not because of the misleading way in which anarchism is presented in the mainstream: as a chaotic, often violent absence of any social order. The ideal of anarchism is actually, more or less [I'm not going to go out on a limb and give a definition of anarchism, which would certainly be refuted by those more knowledgeable than myself], of a society based on equality, direct democracy, mutual assistance, and voluntary cooperation, including the voluntary acceptance of some mutually agreed-upon rules. That is a wonderful ideal. And it may be true that the innate goodness of the majority of people can be counted on to maintain such a society in the absence of any coercive rule, but what of the manipulative, nasty and cruel who dwell among us, even if we assume them to be only the tiniest minority? My personal experience with limited groups that claimed to be based on anarchist principles has been that it takes very little for the basest of human instincts to take over an idyllic little group. Avowed egalitarianism is allowed to descend into informal and unacknowledged power elites, and, as always, power corrupts. The powerful enforce groupthink. Scapegoats are singled out for attack, and the beautifully-conceived little community devolves into Lord of the Flies.

This is a fairly old interview that I only recently came across:

On Anarchism, Intellectual Integrity, and Books: An Interview With Sander Hicks of Soft Skull Press
[Conducted in June 2001 at the Underground Publishing Conference in Bowling Green, Ohio.]

"Question: And you're definitely not anarchists.
Answer: We're definitely not anarchists! But, as we're finding this weekend, I don't think the best minds of society are being attracted to either anarchism or a partisan left socialism these days. I think you're finding a lot of mediocrity, conformity, and rote thinking, rather than a certain spirit of intellectual firepower, and belief, and a great powerful rationality. You're just not finding these things in these so-called "radical" groups. So I'm personally feeling a little bit on edge this morning, especially after the panel on ostracism. We had a short question-and-answer period after these panelists had an hour-long talk about their own personal anecdotes of kicking crazy people out of their little anarchist groups, and it got me thinking: Is ostracism justice? How do you actually create justice in a radical community? "

Friction Magazine, where I found this interview, has a host of other interesting stuff worth checking out.

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^^^ June 13, 2004         A Radical Response to Rising College Tuition?

[asfo_del]
The average American undergraduate is leaving college nearly $20,000 in debt and entering a world in which the middle class is disappearing, with fewer prospects for a permanent job, virtually no job security, and, for a large percentage of graduates, no future pension and no health insurance. According to an article in the June 2 - 8 issue of the Village Voice, the current generation of young people is having to pay for more of their own tuition, with fewer grants available and a greater reliance on loans, while tuition rates are skyrocketing. Rates at public colleges are up 47% since 1993.

The article bemoans the lack of student activism when it comes to protecting the interests of the students themselves, but goes on to mention a few initiatives that have started up in recent years, which mainly involve lobbying and agitating against cuts in education funding. I find those efforts admirable, of course, but they seem to be mild, reformist approaches which don't address root causes.

That you have to go to college is a notion that is scared into the hearts of young people. That you have to go to the best possible college that your academic record and test scores [and economic situation] will allow is another. Does it not raise a red flag of concern and wonder in the hearts of prospective students that the most selective institutions [that is, exclusive,, in the literal sense that they exclude] are also the most expensive, and that the degree of exclusivity correlates directly with the level of tuition expense? If you are being selected primarily for your socioeconomic class, why would you want to participate in this terrible perpetuation of inequality?

The perception of the usefulness of a college degree has gone over recent decades from a ticket into the comfortable professional class to a minimum credential for survival, but the truth is that it is neither. "Most cruelly, young people are incurring these unprecedented levels of debt in order to gain admission to a world of middle-class comfort that may not be waiting for them, now or ever." We all know college graduates who work at menial jobs. High-paying professional jobs require much more than an undergraduate degree, like having attended medical school or law school, which means having incurred an even more untenable level of debt for anyone but the wealthy -- and there's no assurance of a secure job even in those fields.

The colleges themselves are always considered beyond reproach, themselves the victims of funding cuts, just like the students. They're never held to task for their own tuition increases. But why does it cost so much to go to college? Many institutions have been, unethically, in my view, cutting their own costs by increasingly relying on adjunct faculty, who are given very low pay, little or no benefits, and who have no job security from semester to semester. Elite colleges whose tuition and fees are astronomical are crazy wasteful. In a recent year, Brown spent $12 million dollars on development [fundraising] and alumni relations while only raising $10 million in alumni donations, which tells me that, effectively, the university spent $2 million that year on public relations.

The radical response to all of this is to refuse to participate. There has to be an alternative way in which we can educate ourselves. How much would it cost to get 20 or 100 people together, rent classroom space, hire teachers and professors, who are currently unemployed in droves, buy books, and get ourselves an education? Certainly a lot less than tens of thousands of dollars per year per person. Yes, okay, there are other needed and desirable facilities, but, ultimately, becoming educated is a job of the mind, not of facilities, and a mind only needs contact with thoughts and ideas, in person and in books, in order to grow.

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^^^ June 11, 2004    Reflections on The Mole People

[Richard]
My thoughts about Greil Marcus and Lipstick Traces led me to thoughts about an article I wrote shortly after reading that book, called Burrowed Frontiers. My writing in this article (which appeared in a 1994 issue of Bad Subjects and a subsequent Bad Subjects anthology) was influenced by Greil Marcus’ technique of intellectually connecting seemingly unconnected things and repeatedly bringing it all back to the subject of rock music, especially subversive or "underground" rock. In other ways (especially stylistically), my article was probably more influenced by J.G. Ballard, whom I’d also been reading extensively. But initially, it was inspired by (and sort of about) a book called The Mole People, by Jennifer Toth, which was based on a number of interviews that this journalist conducted in strange dwellings that were literally underground. So my thoughts finally returned to that subject, too...

The Mole People, as many people know, were mostly destitute residents of the tunnels under New York City -- homeless people who had squatted abandoned subway tunnels, freight train tunnels, and tunnels that housed pipe systems, sewer systems, or other passages burrowed deeply within the city’s infrastructure. These people were not living an enviable life by any stretch, but Toth’s books, among others, showed some of them developing a society intriguingly separate from, and in opposition to, the mainstream. The Mole People exhibited a lot of social ingenuity; in a way, they were the most daring of squatters, and some of them had very interesting ideas. Some of them, as shown in Toth’s interviews, exhibited an impressively stubborn refusal to submit themselves to the rules (and mercy) of the state, to fall victim to its degrading treatment, or be further victimized by its wretched, dangerous shelter system. Meanwhile, as shown in many pictures (pictures taken by Margaret Morton for Toth’s book and a number of other photo and film documents), some of these improvised bunkers weren’t half-bad as basic shelter, especially when compared to a cardboard box. And curiously, the people who lived furthest underground, in the most removed and surreal abandoned tunnels, were most able to develop cohesive and distinct communities (while scatterbrained crack addicts, for instance, tended to live closer to the surface).

Maybe it’s because of these inspiring aspects of the Mole People’s rebellion that they became so widely discussed and even romanticized. Although there are more archetypical reasons for this fascination -- when in history were people not fascinated with the idea of a world underground? In addition to the numerous old myths, there’s a wealth of science fiction about this concept, from H.G. Wells to Harlan Ellison...

There’s a good Web site that links to numerous articles that came out about the Mole People, discusses their situation, and also debunks some of the myths. Clearly, while its great that some “respectable” people in the above-ground society chose not to completely shun and abhor the Mole People, some others ran into the danger of making their harsh existence into something perversely glamorous. If the Mole people were so interesting, some cynics might argue, then why didn’t these privileged journalists go and live with them for good?

But within a couple of years of Toth’s book, all of these arguments became a moot point. Rudy Giuliani conducted a very successful sweep of the underground tunnels, and the Mole People were evicted.

It would be interesting to read an extensive follow-up to this story. (Has anybody written one?) Where did the Mole People wind up? Did their lives become more or less degrading than the lives that they’d gotten used to underground? And how much right did the New York City government have to evict them from so many old tunnels that would never be put to constructive use anyway? It’s true that as a result of so much embarrassing publicity, the city government did initiate some reforms, made some effort to help homeless people found on the subways, and even improved a few people’s lives. But I suspect that the extent of those reforms was relatively limited and certainly didn’t justify the eviction.

As awful as the Mole People’s existence might have seemed to the average middle-class individual, it was an existence that they had every right to choose for themselves. Once again, poor people had created an alternative way of surviving, and the state simply would not stand for it.

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^^^ June 10, 2004    Getting Back Into Greil Marcus

[Richard]
This past week (after my last computer crashed), I finally got around to reading an old book by Greil Marcus called Mystery Train. This book is a great piece of rock criticism that had been sitting on my shelf for a number of years, maybe because I was afraid that Marcus’ pre-punk work would simply pale in my mind next to the book of his that I read about a decade ago, Lipstick Traces. Probably most everybody who's read rock criticism or even cultural criticism knows about Lipstick Traces, that famous book which made wildly leaping theoretical connections between the first wave of punk rock (1975-77), Situationism, dadaism, and surrealism. Some people don’t at all like what Marcus did in that particular book, but I loved it, and I still think everybody who was ever involved in punk rock should read it. Nonetheless, when I finally read Mystery Train, I found it to be almost as rewarding. It reminded me of why I also love rockabilly (though sometimes I think Marcus made a bit much of Elvis, while I could absolutely see, in the other book, why he made so much of Johnny Rotten). In addition, it told me things I never knew about The Band, Robert Johnson, and Randy Newman, illuminated me with a few facts I didn’t know about Sun Records’ first artist, Harmonica Frank (I have his great, rare recording "Rockin' Chair Daddy" on a compilation album somewhere), and told me a lot about Sly and the Family Stone.

The Sly chapter, I thought, was particularly good, as it drew very convincing parallels between the changes in Sly’s music and the changes in the civil rights movement, the black power movement, and various other manifestations of that '60s almost-revolution heading into the more downbeat '70s. This chapter contains some fascinating history of the Black Panthers. It also is the first piece of rock criticism I’ve read that actually sort of confirmed my own long-held feelings that the early ‘70s Sly and the Family Stone album called There’s a riot goin’ on was far more interesting and moving than the prior, more optimistic albums that contained Sly’s most famous hits. And finally (though somewhat tangentially), this chapter provides a very interesting, detailed review of Across 110th Street, a movie that has morbidly fascinated me.

Probably, Mystery Train is best known for the writing that Marcus did about Elvis and the 1950s (which must have been intended, given the title, etc.). But it seems to me that Marcus' real brilliance came through in both the above-mentioned books when he talked about the '70s. In Lipstick Traces, he beautifully captured one part of that decade, reveling in the punk explosion, while in Mystery Train -- especially that chapter on Sly -- he just as beautifully captured the other part. And sometimes his descriptions of the '70s have startling relevance to the present -- which is why I'd like to close with the following passages...

Throughout the years of Nixon’s ascendancy, the New Yorker opened most issues with a page of unsigned commentary that tried to see through each week’s dose of lies -- the obvious lies told by those in power, and the more subtle, pathetic lies told by those who twisted to escape the first....

These are the politics of freeze-out. They turn into a culture of seamless melancholy with the willful avoidance of anything -- a book, some photographs, a record, a movie, even a newspaper -- that one suspects might produce really deep feeling. Raw emotions must be avoided when one knows they will take no shape but that of chaos.

Within such a culture there are many choices: cynicism, which is a smug, fraudulent kind of pessimism; the sort of camp sensibility that puts all feeling at a distance; or culture that reassures, counterfeits excitement and adventure, and is safe. A music as broad as rock ’n’ roll will always come up with some of each, and probably that’s just as it should be.

Sometimes, though, you want something more: work so intense and compelling you will risk chaos to get close to it, music that smashes through a world that for all of its desolation may be taking on too many of the comforts of familiarity. Sly created a moment of lucidity in the midst of all the obvious negatives and the false, faked hopes; he made his despair mean something in the midst of a despair it is all too easy to think may mean nothing at all. He was clearing away the cultural and political debris that seemed piled up in mounds on the streets, in the papers, in the record stores; for all of the darkness of what he had to say and how he said it, his music had the kind of strength and naked honesty that could make you want to start over.

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^^^ June 8, 2004    Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!

[Richard]

Ding Dong!
The Witch is dead.
Which old Witch?
The Wicked Witch!
Ding Dong!
The Wicked Witch is dead!

Wake up -- sleepy head,
Rub your eyes, get out of bed.
Wake up,
The Wicked Witch is dead.

She's gone where the goblins go,
Below -- below -- below.
Yo-ho, let's open up and sing and ring the bells out.
Ding Dong, the merry-oh,
Sing it high, sing it low.
Let them know
The Wicked Witch is dead!

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^^^ June 2, 2004         Working is Hell

[asfo_del]
It's been thirty years since the publication of Studs Terkel's book Working, an oral history describing people's experiences in the workplace. En editorial in The New York Times, published May 31, 2004, notes how much worse working conditions have become in the last 30 years, and how much less satisfied or tolerant of their jobs the majority have become since the publication of Working. I myself don't remember the stories in that book as being particularly rosy, though it's been many years since I've read it, but I have no doubt that working has become an even greater hell. Output is measured in increasingly less human terms, and management styles have become ever more "scientific," creating strange timetables of goals and productivity which are usually outside of the workers' control but for which they are held accountable.

According to the Times editorial, about 4% of all workers are stuck in soul-sucking call centers, supervised with a method known as "management by stress." A study conducted last fall found that only 49% of workers in the U.S. were satisfied with their jobs, down from 59% in 1995. Partly because of the enormous pressure placed on workers to increase productivity, in a recent two and a half year period corporate profits went up 85% -- but wages only rose 4.5% in the same period.

According to the author of Work Abuse: How to Recognize and Survive It, workers are so often abused by sadistic and power-drunk supervisors and employers that its aftermath can cause symptoms similar to post traumatic stress disorder. [Richard has made reference to this before.] "Work abuse is so prevalent, it's always a shock for someone coming out of school to go into the workplace." Working at a demeaning and stultifying job is so nearly necessary for survival in our society that not enough thought is given to the fact that not all people are able, by temperament, upbringing, constitution, or whatever, to tolerate the submission to authority and adherence to an extremely rigid schedule that working at the overwhelming majority of jobs requires.

I picked up a book from the library yesterday that is a recent version of Working. It's called Gig: Americans Talk About their Jobs at the Turn of the Millenium. I've only read a few entries so far, but I was struck by the seemingly docile acceptance of lousy conditions. Perhaps that should be no surprise, however, since docility and mild acceptance are required to be able to continue to go back to a job that is humiliating and dehumanizing. The alternative would be to storm off, screaming, but then how would one survive, with no paycheck?

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