I realized how inactive I’ve been lately, writing the same, so I rushed to the Capitol. What I found left me in disarray. There were about five to seven folks I didn’t recognize in the Assembly gallery, and then about four to five members of the Autonomous Solidarity Organization (A.S.O.) came in as well. For all the mess people have talked about them, well needless to say, they were the people there. I know it was late at night, I know people have things going on, but I consistently relied on them to keep me abreast of what was going on. I dare any one of you to challenge them to a contest of knowledge when it comes to the processes of our government. You’d be astounded. I love them.

Furthermore, the hypocrisy of the whole affair was blatant. The Assembly folks were on their cell phones, laptops (state provided I guess), eating in the chamber, while we were yelled at over and over again to put away our cell phones, cameras, etc. I mean it’s just RIDICULOUS. You need to go up there and sit in the gallery and see how the cops and pages treat you. It’s like you’re a little kid. You can’t send a bloody text.

So after all this bureaucractic mess I started paying attention. I realized it was in reference to just once specific grant, the Talent Incentive Grant. Still it’s .5% of the state’s financial aid, somewhere around a couple of million dollars of funding distributed by $600 to $1,800 apportionments I think. As always check my facts. The amendment was introduced by Rep. Peggy Krusick (D-Milwaukee) AT ELEVEN P.M. SHE’S A DEMOCRAT. I’m too confused, but I guess she breaks ranks often.

IT’S LIKE WE’RE IN THE BLOODY 20th CENTURY AGAIN. JUST READ SOME OF THE COMMENTS ON THIS WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL ARTICLE.

NOT TO MENTION, all these Assembly people were voting for their comrades when they weren’t there. Just reaching over and pushing buttons to signal a vote. ISN’T THAT ILLEGAL?

GAH! So why did I decide to call this post “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil”? For multiple reasons:

1. Race matters.
2. Race matters.
3. Race matters.
4. But no really, race matters.
5. When they say we should be colorblind maybe they’re right. But it’s just not possible.

Patricia Williams said in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”:

“I do wish however to counsel against the facile innocence of those three notorious monkeys, hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil. Theirs is a purity achieved through ignorance. Ours must be a world in which we know each other better”.

She points out how unfashionable it is these days to remind people of slaver and colonialism even in it’s complete relevance today. Since 1970, the incarceration rate of African Americans has skyrocketed by 780%. I don’t think I need to tell anyone about racial profiling, or mandatory minimums, or Tyisha Miller who was shot 27 times while in her car by the police in 1997. Oh boy, I’m barely scratching the surface. RACE MATTERS!

Another perfect quote from a Defend Wisconsin blog post:

“The Wisconsin Financial Aid Study, which I co-direct, has found that grants are most effective when targeted to the students least likely to graduate from college,” says Sara Goldrick-Rab, a UW-Madison associate professor of education policy studies and sociology. “The playing field in K-12 and higher education remains uneven, and thus race continues to have an important relationship to graduation. I encourage our Legislature to use empirical evidence to guide their decision-making, so as to make the best use of scarce resources”.

The real reason why I titled this post the way I did was the sick irony of whoever’s decision it was to put the “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” monkeys outside of State Street Brats. So now homeless people can’t sleep on our benches. We’re going to ignore the plight of the homeless in Madison, the Common Council a while back even tried to remove a bench from in front of Taco Bell because people were congregating there. How sadistic. I’m so mad.

A lot has happened so far. I’ve had many interesting conversations with incredible organizers and activists. I’ve also been frustrated quite a bit. I’ll discuss both.

Positives

Have to start with the positives first. I’ve met quite a few amazing people. I ran into J. Bless who produced an environmental album with Seasunz that can be found here. Coming back for a second helping with the Generational Alliance has been incredible. The youth leaders here are so welcoming and some of the people I consider myself closest to in the progressive movement. I met Calvin Williams, Christina Hollenback, Billy Wimsatt, Nora Rahimian and many others last year and they are people who continue to reinvigorate my interest in the movement. They and others are the reason I will continue to do this work. This has been a good opportunity to talk and reunite with friends. I’ve met with lots of older folks too who have inspired me as well.

Negatives

Well, quite truthfully there have been a handful. There just doesn’t seem to be as much energy in the room as the last conference. I seriously wonder what this conference would look like if the Generational Alliance didn’t provide scholarships for young working class, people of color, differing sexualities, abilities, etc. I made a comment about how old and white the room was looking to a friend in the elevator (yes I know I’m white, yes I know I’m upper middle class, yes I know I’m able bodied) to signify these feelings juxtaposed to last years conference, and a woman started interrogating me. I think she was genuinely interested in why I felt like that, but I also think she was offended. I’m not saying that old white people can’t be progressive, certainly they can be (my grandfather is quite the progressive himself) I just feel that this conference is SO D.C. centric, almost to its detriment. There needs to be MUCH MORE of a focus on community centered change and organizing if we really do seek to build the bond between the D.C. politicos and the people doing work on the ground in their community. It’s cool that the “#wiunion movement” is taking the Wellstone award and all that sort of thing, and that Gaby Pacheco is taking an award for the DREAM activists, but really, an award is something, incorporating youth voices in generating strategy AND validating them is a completely different thing.

Not to mention, why are the racial justice and progressive movement SO DAMN mutually exclusive? One of the panelists this morning, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky said something like, “I know there were lynchings and everything but most Americans had a shot at the dream”. Really? REALLY? Are you REALLY going to go there? I don’t even know where to start. Perhaps it has to do with the bigger discussion of the language of the “American Dream” movement. Don’t get me wrong, I really like the Rebuild the Dream movement and think the hub is a good idea; I’m just super disappointed because I feel like talk of racial and identity justice is pushed to the fringe of this movement.

Hopefully this provides some overview to how I’ve been dealing with the conference. Hope everyone that reads this is doing well, and feel free to disagree as always.

Tuesday 6:53 P.M. students are chanting “power, power, power to the students, student power” and “we are more than a score” in the Varsity Hall of the new Union South! Will have pictures up soon!

7:02 P.M. the debate is starting, Roger Clegg is booed on his introduction!

7:05 P.M. Roger Clegg is starting his ten minute speech! He doesn’t expect to win many people over today. Affirmative action is an ambitious term that means different things to different people. It has meant different things in the course of the time it has been used. (editor’s note: I really don’t know what he’s talking about right now, it’s confusing).

The only kind of affirmative action that is bad is affirmative discrimination. Taking race into account he opposes. That’s the form that we’ll be talking about tonight. In saying that that kind of action is discrimination doesn’t mean the debate is over. We have to decide whether the benefits from that discrimination, outweigh the cons.

The benefits of racial preferences (affirmative action), but I don’t think much of them, there’s not much to it. The principal justification is America’s long sad tragic history of discrimination, particularly against African Americans. The problem with that justification in the higher education context, it’s a non starter. The Supreme Court has rejected the argument in higher education.

(editor’s note: he’s totally just rambling right now). I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I get another ten minutes after the professor. (editor’s note: that’s the funniest thing he said yet).

7:19 P.M. Professor Church is speaking now, mostly about the legal justifications for affirmative action. The law is supposed to protect everyone equally. He’s talking about the Bakke decision from California. Universities may not identify quotas, but they may recognize the dynamics of oppression in the U.S. and practice affirmative action.

Why should there be a single answer? Why shouldn’t the Supreme Court say, like a state institution, try moderate affirmative action, let’s experiment with it. Many democratically controlled institutions, legislatures, favor affirmative action. For example, the people of Michigan who dictate university policy, they allowed the law school to have some affirmative action.

There ARE positives to affirmative action: the world population will hit 9 billion people by 2050. The population will be 97% non white. (editor’s note: anyone notice Clegg’s Coke (Koch) product placement, wonder if they’re paying him off for that)?

Dozens and dozens of groups support moderate affirmative action including: U.S. government, U.S. army, 21 states including Wisconsin.

Follow me on Twitter for more updates: @maxwelljohnlove

Post rally and march to Union South!

Earlier this morning: 

So by now I’m guessing most people reading this have some understanding about what is going on. I am posting this blog to give a recap of the morning’s events, as well as preparations for this evening. There will be little analysis of the claims of the Center of Equal Opportunity because I think many others are doing a wonderful job.

Not sure if this link, from a friend in South Africa will work for those of you not friends with her on Facebook but here’s an illustrative quote from her article:

“There is inherent tension in CEO’s title and their “colorblind” mission. If CEO advocates for “equal” educational opportunity across racial barriers, it must acknowledge the historicity of the socioeconomic, educational, social, racial, and heterosexist daily oppressions or multiple jeopardies that people of color face in every aspect of their lives”.

There was a rally at the Doubletree hotel in Madison this morning to protest the Center’s claims that  “this is the most severe undergraduate admissions discrimination that CEO has ever found in the dozens of studies it has published over the last 15 years”.

Tonight there is a protest at 6 P.M. on Bascom Hill in support of affirmative action and a diverse student body which will result in a march to Union South Varsity Hall where a debate will ensue between a U.W. professor and Roger Clegg, otherwise known as the hate monger who works for the Center.

What am I amazed about? The show of diversity itself this morning. Every type imaginable. There were people of differing races, socioeconomic status, gender, sexuality, ability, and other forms of identity this morning at the protest. Everyone was wearing something to support their academic program, or a group on campus, or just plain red to show support for everyone being a Badger.

The protest started outside the hotel, and quickly moved inside when the press conference was interrupted to the chant of “we are more than a score”. Student confronted Roger Clegg as he left to the elevator, but no threats were made and no one was hurt. There was passion in the air, and it’s understandable; our very integrity as a people, as a community, and as an institution is under attack.

Should we stay peaceful? Probably. I mean come on, this dude does a press conference in his OWN hotel, where he’s staying, with a 70 year old man for a body guard? He was EXPECTING something. He wants SOMETHING. Who knows if there are people in the crowd there to incite us. Is it not my position to get frustrated if something does happen. I’ll stand behind the decisions my peers make. “We can be great fighters without fighting”.

After discussing what’s going on with several people on the national scene this is something to be taken seriously. At first I just thought the Center wants publicity, but other groups have been successful in other states. As one friend from California mentioned, first they came for our unions, now they’re going to try and split us on race. We won’t let them.

Interesting fact: the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action are white women. Another interesting thing to ponder: why isn’t he attacking legacy students? I know I had an advantage considering generations of my family have attend this university.

Follow @uwtogether or #uwtogether on Twitter for updates!

Multiple reviews have noted that Default: The Student Loan Documentary reeks more of a horror film than a documentary. Now that I think about it, it did leave me with sweaty palms and near nightmares, let alone the expectation that I’ll soon witness the mountain of student loan debt when it comes crumbling down on U.S. society.

The documentary aptly mixes a catchy tune with real human faces. The rollercoaster of excitement that comes with applying and being accepted to college is quickly followed by the gravity of predatory lending habits. Default demystifies jargon like forbearance; a practice I myself didn’t know existed. It does a good job illustrating the pain that accompanies exponentially increasing interest payments. When a few graduates described $30,000 loans that tripled, I about fell out of my seat.

The truth remains clear: we have a debtors prison, even if it isn’t one with chains and locks. Those of us with student loan debt need to out ourselves! We need to hold the President to his promises when it comes to debt forgiveness. Accessible and affordable education promotes a more just society. Right now there’s a bubble, and it’s just waiting to pop.

People ask, how do you find it?
They point at the trash, I point at the people.

The man who bandaged my knee.
The man who stitched up a cut at 11PM.
The man who gave me raisins to eat.
The neighbors, the kids, the resistance.

A woman says it’s all a people problem,
it’s not the people’s problem,
(as Lupe would say, they’re a part of the problem,
the problem is they’re peaceful);
it’s the people in power’s problem.

We live in Shatila!
“No you don’t”.
Yes we do.

We lived there, but temporarily.
It’s a residence not our home.
But it was home.

I’m tired and it smells like burning garbage.

Our curriculum was based on freedom, dignity, integrity, community, politics, environment, and social issues. Because I taught the highest level English speakers we were able to discuss these topics in depth and connect them with life experiences. Thankfully I remembered my copy of Pedagogy of the Oppressed and a sort of colearning ensued. It was a balance between being an “ajnebeea” (foreigner) teacher working with the students and trying to create a healthy non imposing learning environment (with one day of training).

My escape was the privilege of spending one month building these relationships, away from frantic life in the U.S. I remember hearing before I left, something along the lines of “people with the least amount of stuff give the most”.

The Palestinian people in Shatila were the epitome of that saying. Whether it be the invitations to family meals, to spend time smoking hookah, or just the general inquisitiveness. Try walking a block without hearing someone call your name, say hi, or at least question your nationality, religious beliefs, or martial status, all with a charming smile and a thick accent to boot. It’s enough to make anyone cry happy tears for the power of humanity.

Needless to say I was reduced to tears multiple times for that and other reasons; once when my student wrote the most beautiful poem about freedom, and once for helplessness as I knew I wasn’t doing anything for the kids.

Oh the contradictions, although we had no power half the day and no potable water (due to 18% concentration of salt) I had that precious escape in the form of U.S. citizenship and money.

Beirut, Lebanon is a war torn city, ravaged by civil war from the years 1975 to 1991, and invaded by Israel most recently in 2006. Palestinians were massacred in Shatila in the year 1982 and there is a rather large memorial a minutes walk from the house.

We had the privilege hearing of the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) from elders of Palestine. These events are etched into the collective memory of the city’s walls by shrapnel marks and graffiti.

My mind has become war torn with the constant travel between Beirut’s nicest neighborhood of Hamra and Shatila. It would have been a more authentic experience staying in the camp and trying to live like a refugee the entire time. A few of our meetings were in Hamra but we traveled there more than several times to use Internet and relax in air conditioning.

Not to mention we were invited to spend multiple evenings with funders of the program! This was after a day of traveling around Lebanon and often times ended at a nice house and once a vineyard. I’m still not sure how I feel about these forays into Lebanon, I’m not sure what the students would think to know their teachers are spending so much time outside the camp.

I have definitely changed though. My iPhone doesn’t matter as much, my burner will suffice, and I can deal with lots of dirt now. Reflecting on the union protests and conditions in Shatila is also difficult. It still matters but I’m witnessing people struggle to live everyday! Just hoping the picture has broadened a bit and I think it has …

This post is for Khaleel, Nadine, Zouhair, Samar, Sarah, Sabah, Alaa, Hiba, and Sereene. You all are smart. So smart, and someday, someday you’ll be free.

We’re working long weeks, teaching six hours a day, leading photography workshops for an hour, and spending on average about three hours on prep in addition to our planned activities.

I’m definitely noting the issues with volunteer tourism or what a fine article from the Times called slumdog tourism after the advent of movies such as City of God and Slumdog Millionaire.

We are living in a refugee camp and experiencing a lack of potable water (18% salt), a lack of power half the day, among other conditions but admittedly we are here for only a month and have left the camp on multiple occasions for trips to ruins and the sea.

Oftentimes conversations come up about why we are here, or about what we are doing. It’s hard spending money traveling when you’re reminded how much the daily necessities are and the youth talk about not being able to do them but it’s a reality we just have to struggle against. Topic of the week in class; dignity, identity, and integrity.

The people I’ve met and befriended, Moustafa, Mahmoud, and our neighbors are all incredible and welcoming. All the kids are BRILLIANT! We are studying freedom, politics, identity, and medical terminology since I have the most advanced students. But it’s difficult to plan for.

A recap of the weekend: a neighborhood celebration for a fellow volunteer’s birthday hosted by Moustafa, a trip to the Jeita Grotto and Bilbos, a trip to Malak’s for dinner (she is a founder of the UYLP project), and a trip to the beach before a hectic week!

Missing friends and family at home but falling in love with Lebanon and the Palestinian people.

Second, since I actually have a limited amount of free time now that I’m not being a Democratic hack, and by Democratic hack I mean working for an unabashed progressive who hates the Democratic Party, I wanted to express what exactly my vision for the much-hated and very inefficient Associated Students of Madison is.

That was an incredibly long sentence with multiple tangents and I apologize.

But anyway.  I wanted to write my concept of what ASM, and specifically ASM Council, should be because it’s obvious that those previously in leadership positions have a very different vision than those today.  And this has led to significant mistrust on both sides.  There’s this “two sides” mentality and “they’re out to get you” train of thought going on.  And that’s just patently untrue.  Why?  Well, because ASM doesn’t matter enough for there to be enemies and cutthroat politicking.  Yet.  Or at least… it shouldn’t.  Again, in my eyes.

ASM does important work, yes.  It is state-mandated that students must have some power in governance of their university.  This is why we all chant “36095.”  It is codified student power, and that is awesome.  But power to what?

Well, here’s what I think it should be spending its power doing.

1. Hold administration accountable.
Now, I know we all want a nice working relationship with those who currently wield real power.  Well, here’s the deal… at the end of the day, administration is not our friend.  This has been true since grade school.  Administration does not exist to make students’ lives better.  Especially at a university where students are often a secondary priority (remember, this is a research facility).  It should be our job to hold them accountable.  To make sure they enact policies that help students and to tear them apart when they don’t.

“Well, what about our working relationship with them?”  Listen, bud, they don’t see you as equals, they see you as pawns.  A working relationship if you’re into S+M and want to assign sub-dom roles.

The people we should be fostering relations with is faculty and staff.  Their and our interests, while not always aligning, will be better meshed and more conducive to solidarity than with administration.  And united, these three groups can do anything.  This is truly where Shared Governance becomes powerful and is essential.  In fact, we should really examine whether this huge top-down administration is even necessary – it certainly wasn’t in the past.

2. Fight for student rights.
Obviously.  Nobody’s against that.  But what are student rights?  Student rights includes not just those here, but prospective students.  So student rights, in my opinion, means accessibility and affordability.  It means constantly questioning the current system in place and seeing if we can do it better – for students.

I will tackle affordability in a second.  But first, let’s get the obvious out of the way.  Student rights means this is a safe place for all students.  That means we actively promote diversity, whether it be race, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, whatever.  These underrepresented groups must be included and be made to feel included.  When they speak up, we all benefit from the differing perspectives.

That shouldn’t be too controversial.  Legislative Affairs isn’t, either.  Lobby for student interests.  Pretty straightforward.

Now, accessibility.  This seems a little more… nuanced.  Essentially, students can’t afford to come here.  Poor students, which are disproportionately racial minorities, cannot come here.  This is taken as a fact of life.  Tuition’s quadrupled in what, 20 years?  Professor Sara Goldrick-Rab can talk more about why this has happened and why it’s not inevitable, but this brings me to my point:  Tuition is the key to increasing accessibility.  We constantly bicker about the cost of Segregated Fees, and yes, we should be concerned with how much those cost.  But the real cost, and what’s truly rising at a rate that is out of control, is tuition.

It’s certainly harder to tackle.  We’d have to reverse a national trend that’s been going on since before we’re alive.  That’s where fostering good relations with faculty and staff and holding administration accountable comes in.

Staff are an underpaid, under-respected group.  We should be helping them defend their union rights and get them living wages, and in turn they can help us fight tuition – it’s their kids who can’t make it here.

Faculty’s intellectual freedoms are getting constantly threatened by the increased dependence on private donations.  We should be defending their rights and in turn they should be able to understand our need for lower tuition (after all, most of them were campus radicals once upon a time).

Then you say, “Where’s the money for all this?  How do we pay staff more, decrease private money, and decrease tuition and keep a good school?”

True.  Right now there isn’t the money.  But this system is broke.  Which is why we need to get political in a different way.  We need to admit that progressive policies, like increased taxation on the rich and corporate, are needed.  That people who care about schools and will increase as opposed to cuts get elected.  We need to take partisan stands.

We’re UW-MADISON.  THEY EXPECT US TO BE INSANE RADICALS.  Why not live up to it?  And we can achieve that – if we organize.  We need to organize the student base to fight as a group.  We need to organize faculty and staff to fight along our side.  When we achieve success in changing the fundamental system, the paradigm on higher education, even a little bit, then we can take ourselves as seriously as we do today.

Right now we live in an imaginary world.  We have newspapers fanning our egos and segregated fees to bicker about.  In terms of segregated fees, what’s more important to student rights – lowering the 20% we do control that goes to valuable student services, or fighting for more transparency and control over the other 80%?  We need to break out of our bubble.  We need to go to Memorial Union and go, “Hey.  Show me the money!”  We need to go to the Capitol and go, “I’m throwing you out of office!”  And we need to go to the Chancellor’s office and sit down.  Erm… okay maybe occupations are a little extreme.

Oh wait, no they’re not.  When working with the system’s boundaries is not enough, it’s time to break those chains and use any means necessary.  The Civil Rights Movement knew it.  The Labor Movement used to, too.  We need to be on the cutting edge of these social movements again – because historically, students have led the charge on progress.  And if we sit back and play the system and pretend to be part of it, we are no longer the vanguard of change.  And we will see our world crumble.

So.  Our enemies are not each other.  While we may differ in tactics, the real enemy is a government that refuses to fund education and uses wedge issues to convince voters to vote against their interests (including education).  The real enemy is administration that refuses to take hard stances for the betterment of diversity and affordability.

Whether we agree on WISPIRG being a valuable campus resource or not is small fry in comparison.

Side note: I do.  I think they’re incredibly wishy-washy on the issues, but I think they give a valuable service on teaching how to organize – and organizing is essential to build a movement for positive change.  Thus, WISPIRG is a great tool for students.  Any accusation of ASM “corruption” for supporting WISPIRG is off-base, untrue, misguided, and, well, irrelevant.  Get your head out your asses and let’s get this movement started.

So, what should ASM be?  ASM should be the institutionalized power that gets students organized.

P.S. there are only a few roaches in our apartment! Had a power outage last night but it’s a great place!

Max is going to be out in Lebanon, as he detailed in an earlier post.  So I will be your resident campus radical today.

Here’s the song for the day/post.

Leland Pan at your service.  It seems I already evoke a sense of divisiveness.  I hear a lot about how I’m crazy, violent, over the top, and Szarzynski’s my mentor.  Now… all of that may be true, but what I hope to achieve here is some sense of understanding of the fabled conceptual “radical.”

Radical, as my “mentor” Szarzynski repeatedly points out, originates from Latin for “getting to the root.”  What do I try to get to the root of?  Simply put, injustice.

Seeing children in poverty attend worse schools, seeing minority students become disenfranchised by the college curriculum, seeing drug users incarcerated for a medical problem…  The unnecessary inequalities of today’s society is something I refuse to just pass me by.  I will not sit by, content with my own comfortable life, and watch people fall through the cracks due to no fault of their own.  As Jefferson Smith said (and I paraphrase), “Lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for, and we fight for them for the only reason why anyone fights for them; because of one plain, simple rule… Love thy neighbor.  And in this world today, full of hatred, a man who knows that one rule has a great trust.”

Now, what I’ve said so far shouldn’t be controversial.  And I’m assuming you’re still with me here.  That’s hopefully not why you’re levying criticism at the “far left.”

The criticism is… well, what?  We won’t listen to reason?  Our actions are “temper tantrums” that make farces of the political situation?  I’m an “anti-social anarchist that sounds just like so and so, they say I’m just a stupid kid, another crazy radical, another generation X that somehow slipped up through the cracks.”

Well, maybe they don’t call me a Cage the Elephant song.

My response is the current political situation is a farce.  Reason is not a commonly used tool in our political sphere.  We have a budget bill that throws tens of thousands of people off health care and probably to an earlier-than-usual death due to the need to “balance our budget” while managing to dole out tax cuts to only the wealthy and the corporate.  All bias aside, that’s objectively… crude at best and inhumanely cruel at worst.  Especially in light of the fact that taxes for corporations and the wealthy have been at their lowest point in decades, if not a century.

We have two parties that consistently ignore the vast majority of American people.  They’re told to fall in line because the other side is worse.  And as each side fails to solve any of our current issues, the other side poses as a real, substantive alternative… and then fail to be said alternative.

We have a Democratic President more conservative than Nixon.  We have Republican candidates more scientifically backward than Hoover.

We have a state assembly bickering over which rooms in the Capitol belong to which party.  We have a state senator who drinks before votes and sleeps with a mistress outside of his district.

Now tell me, where in this does direct action to push our representatives in the direction of the people, a form of peaceful assembly protected by the first amendment and a major way to participate in our democracy, fall under as unreasonable and farcical?

Democracy is not just the ballot box.  Democracy means the people are involved.  And if our system provides a means, through citizen committees, referenda, participatory budgeting, great.  If not, protest is exactly what democracy looks like.  Civil disobedience is what democracy looks like.  There are just laws and then there are unjust laws.  One of those categories was meant to be broken.

Giving any prestige to those in power by playing their game of authority through dressing up, using only legal means such as lobbying to enact change, is exactly that – ceding power to those in power.  When we elect these people, the point is to hold them accountable, not to pretend they are some power source deserving of respect.

Obviously, I’ve stated some things that very clearly point at my political views.  I will not debate them here, though I understand I don’t present real arguments/facts in this post to back them.  The point is to understand what makes the radical tick.  And I understand much criticism of me as a fire-bomber starts with some ridiculous comments I’ve made on Facebook.  Now, it is understandably my fault if my Facebook is meant to be personal to allow access to it from people who do not know me personally.  To clarify – My Facebook has been used since my high school days as an over-the-top caricature to illicit amusement and debate among my friends.  That means I shouldn’t be FB friends with certain people, and for that I apologize.

In addition to other criticisms – Kyle Szarzynski is not my mentor.  He is a good friend of mine and one of the most rational people I know.  We do not conspire in the back of Steep & Brew and discuss how to best write inflammatory comments to piss off moderates and conservatives.

That’s just a natural talent of mine.

Honestly, if you have problems with me, I’m usually understanding and would be entirely willing to speak in person on it.  That’s the mature thing to do and it is a failing on my part not to talk to those I disagree with, I understand.  But behind-the-scenes gossiping with a plastered smile to the person’s face shows our politics for what they are – 13-year-old girls.  No offense to middle school girls.  Some of them are more mature than I am.  So stop by and say hi to me, tell me you think I’m a piece of shit for this and this reasons, and I’ll agree with you and we’ll go about our day.

So, tangential apologies aside, why do we fight?

We fight because racism and sexism is still pervasive in society.

We fight because our public universities are not accessible.

We fight because the workers of the world have no power.

We fight because poverty still exists.

Some of us fight because we refuse to see such injustice carry on one day longer.

Others of us fight or else we die.

Why do I fight?

I fight for my friend who couldn’t afford to go to NYU and got stuck here.  I fight for her because now she can’t even afford to go here and her dreams of going into writing are slowly fading.  I fight for my friend who’s been sexually abused.  I fight for my friend whose single mother is a teacher and broke.

So when I get caught up and say some nasty things, or do some rash action, please remember.  For me, and I’m sure for many of my fellow radicals, this is not business, or a job, or our résumé.

This is personal.

Or, as Cage the Elephant again so nicely put it, “Here’s the moral to the story/We don’t do it for the glory/We don’t do it for the money/We don’t do it for the fame/So all the critics who despise us/Go ahead and criticize us/It’s your tyranny that drives us/Adds the fire to our flames.”

Tyranny is more pervasive than you would care to think.  Every time we legitimize the two-party system, every time monied interests levy more power than people power, every time politicians win on empty slogans and wedge issues, that’s fascism that needs fighting.

And I plan on swinging punches till my dying day.

Which, at the rate of how often I eat vs. lit drop, will be relatively soon.