John Trudell Documentary- what was done to the people before us.

Journal Stuff (From that little book I carry in my back pocket.)

She always liked the strong silent types. He’d been sitting at a corner table, just out of the limelight, for forty-five minutes. He was indifferent. She’d tried several times to catch his eye but he seemed to be oblivious to his surroundings. She asked the bartender to send him over a drink, and she adjusted her neckline for optimum exposure of cleavage- she cant wait to give him her million dollar smile- she‘s been told that her beautiful, white teeth are definitely the closer. She’d gotten plenty of cash at the ATM out front, and tonight she was committed to landing a winner.
The bartender delivers the drink himself, exchanging words with the tall dark stranger and motioning towards where she sits at the bar with a casual wave of his hand. The man glances over at her and smiles, all beautiful white teeth and a strong jaw line reminiscent of Hollywood during better times, before “androgynous good looks” became a standard compliment.

The evening moved along- she never liked eighties hair bands, but if it meant getting his GQ good looks into the sack she’ll put up with Tears for Fears and Duran Duran- even Wham!. They alternate between drinking, dancing and playing pool until she loses her patience with Blinded Me With Science by Thomas Dolby and makes her move. She grabs his cock through his polyester slacks and leans forward, whispering in his ear, “Take me home you hard, handsome fucker- I want this inside of me.”

They left through the back door- there was a camera on the ATM out front. He never had to slip her anything at all- besides being dark and handsome, he was tall- he easily overpowered her.

She probably never would have guessed that she’d find herself in the trunk of a 90’s vintage luxury sedan, wrapped in a plastic drop-cloth with duct tape around her neck and a plastic bag over her head. As if the spare tire left any room for her at all, a girl hates the smell of grease and motor oil.

Walking back to his apartment he felt nothing at all- just another day. The twinks were out on the street-corners, doing a healthy business. After passing a dozen or so, he couldn’t resist the best yet. They exchange pleasantries and politeness, then they get down to business, negotiate and lock in on a number. He takes a crisp clean hundred from her Burberry wallet and hands it to the fresh clean lad with taut skin, tight abs, a tan and straight teeth. The boy gave him a million dollar smile and a wink- he knew he had him from the moment he laid eyes on him.




A Poem: Titled “Grocery List”:


Grocery List:

Hair Gel
Vodka
Seven-up
Chardonnay
Deodorant

If there’s anything left:

Something for dinner
Frozen Burritos
Toilet paper
Toothpaste




His name is Dourehmi Fazholatidou. Miscast in the theater of life, he plays the part of an Algerian nightclub singer while secretly hatching half-assed plans to decimate the Western world for Allah. Time and time again he attempts to contact his cell, oblivious to the idea that they reside only in his medulla oblongata. Keeping up appearances he plays the part, and he does quite well in the speakeasies of New York City. In doing so, he regularly breaks many of the precepts of the sixth pillar of Islam. He does so with a modicum of regret- only enough to appease his sensibilities as he gets blown by a teenage blonde boy in a cab heading from Greenwich Village uptown towards Times Square.


Working in Chinatown, I park up on Punchbowl and walk thirty minutes through downtown rather than pay two bucks an hour to park on streets my tax dollars already pay for. Beyond that, the cops in Chinatown are Nazi assholes and on foot I’m way more mobile and when I watch what’s going on I can avoid contact with them completely.

So after work today I put on my sunglasses and my headphones and turned up Crass and took my walk through Chinatown and downtown, heading up the hill across the freeway to my car. On the way I saw a girl I used to know- a friend of a friend who once dated another friend of mine. We met a few times but otherwise weren’t close or anything, but we used to recognize each other and say hello. Today she looked absolutely radiant in a yellow flowered sun dress and black retro spike heels. She had sunglasses on- like white framed Wayfarers- and her long blonde hair shined in the sun. She was truly beautiful- a brilliant contrast to the surrounding city- and I enjoyed walking a few blocks with her until we went our different directions. As I walked off I looked back to see if she was still there, and she glanced over the hundred feet or so and looked back at me. Odd, that- I just don’t run in those circles anymore- I moved out of town to the East side because the closeness of the city was making me crazy. I kind of wish I had crossed the street and said hi, but you know how it is when you met someone a few times and then don’t see them for a while- it’s like you don’t really know each other or anything- the exchange is just a politeness, because you’re sharing a friend. If I see her again maybe I’ll say hello. Maybe she will. One can never tell.


Walking up Alakea across the freeway I look ahead at the School Street intersection and see this poor fucker hobbling along. It is apparent that one or more of his lower extremities have been seriously fucked up in the recent past. He practically has to grab onto his left leg and lift it to take a step, and he makes scant progress as he crosses the street. He’s pretty run down- maybe my age, maybe a little older, maybe a little younger- it’s hard to tell these days- there are drugs out now that make you age thirty years in three months. I manage to walk about 50 yards in the time it takes him to hobble across a crosswalk. A line of cars wait for him to cross, and for once there isn’t an asshole who lays on the horn- everyone just sits in their cars watching this poor guy and thanking whatever god they believe in for one thing or another. The guy has jeans on and scuffed, dirty running shoes. He looks like he might have been in decent shape at some point a long time ago. Today his flesh hangs from him, sagging, pale, sick- I figure he’s not fat from alcohol because his diet doesn‘t include much more than that. He has no shirt- which immediately reminds me of walking home on city streets with a Mohawk, plaid Bermuda shorts and combat boots on a Sunday morning at sixteen severely hung over without any shirt. His chest hair is turning gray along with the ample hair on his head.. He could use a haircut- his hair is not what I’d call a mane, but it’s getting there- and long strands stick to his forehead in clumps, sweat drips off of him as if he just sprinted a four-forty. We stand there side by side, toes on the curb, and I allow him the courtesy of not saying anything at all. He allows me the same- we barely even glance at each other- sinking ships, passing in the night. BMWs and SUVs whip by us from the left-turn lane, and I see they cant help but look at him, and in each and every one I see that look in their eyes- pity. Pity- if it were a commodity we’d all be rich and they’d all be standing on a corner with their toes on the curb. I look at that pity in their eyes and wonder why when I looked at him all I saw was the future…

Really Great Stacy Peralta Documentary

From the same guy that brought you groundbreaking documentary "Dogtown and Z-boys". Written and produced by Stacy Peralta and Sam George. Narrated by Forrest Whitaker.

Monday- 11-8-2010 6:15 after work burnt out my house Kailua

It’s funny- I struggle with letting anyone close to me. That’s not really a surprise- I always talked a lot but was unconsciously careful about what I revealed. I have always been a social creature, but have been burnt so many times early on that I became very cautious about who I let into my personal space, and how close I let them get. Today I struggle with the idea of a relationship- of that idea as something good- and of the realities that I’ve actually seen first hand.

The older I get, the greater the heartbreak takes a toll. Sometimes I wonder how many heartbreaks I have left in me. I think I can manage a long time alone, but I wonder about how long I can manage under that bleak, black cloud that follows disappointment, and how many more of those I can absorb. Sometimes I think that sounds so pussy- so fucking weak- but sometimes it seems so realistic and reasonable- I’ve always been really good at interpreting what I feel- and right now that logic seems very real.

I’m supposed to meet a girl for dinner this week. I’ve never met her- never seen her- nor she me. Type on a page, she and I. That isn’t a lot to go on. I write well- writers tend to look good in type. That always scares me- no matter how much they liked me on a written page, in person they tend to be either offended by me, or overwhelmed by me, or scared of me, or they just flat don’t like anything about me. In double-spaced 12 point courier font I’m a beautiful romantic, when I want to be. And sometimes I actually am. Rarely, these days- but it happens. In reality I am usually a cynic and a realist- I call a spade a spade, which never seems to be looked upon fondly.

I always struggle with the two ideals of men. The one is to play the game (which I’m not even capable of playing, actually- and for the most part wouldn‘t want to despite any fleshy rewards that might be offered) and telling them what they want to hear. The other is to just be me, and let the chips fall where they may. I always figure that I don’t want to be with someone who is attracted to the person I might act like I am- that’d be work. But truth be told there hasn’t been a lot of interest in a guy like me. Go figure, right? Girls don’t like guys like me who are honest. Guys like me are supposed to tell them all the things they want to hear, and when things fall apart we’re supposed to be real shit heads, and everything gets real ugly and dramatic for everyone involved.

I’m not really down with that. Call me fucked up, call me a dreamer- but I grew up with an idea of how this stuff might be, and I hang onto that naïve paradigm despite the harsh light of reality. Sometimes I think I’m a little like my dad- he was a dreamer, and he hung onto his principles to the bitter end, despite the realities of life- he hung on, no matter what. Maybe it was stupid, maybe it wasn’t- to me it was really good and right, for him- and I respect it. I wish I could be as trusting and loving as he was. Some large part of us is Scott and Irish, and at some point I figure we must make great martyrs. It’s in our blood.

So I guess I’d be a complete pussy if I didn’t go meet this girl. Funny- a couple guys can take the boots to me and I‘ll just curl up and survive- the bouncers can come drag me out in the alley and I will just be perturbed and upset and amused and a little worried- some meatheads might pick a fight with me and I’ll handle it with at the very least a little grace and humor and savoir fair- but make me sit at a table with a girl I don’t know who will undoubtedly expect something from me- now you have my attention, and I‘m completely phobic.

Of course I’ll go. Wish me luck.

This is me being honest about myself, and what I feel. Enjoy it- most of you wont get this all the time.


Aloha- TLH.

He rarely knows the date though he can usually pin down the day and month. Sometimes he forgets the year. When everyone speaks at once he thinks they’re speaking in some foreign language.
Down with a chest cold, he’s been working long hours at a dead-end job with very little sleep. In the grey light of dawn he sits in his wooden chair at a wooden table with a wooden expression on his face. He looks weary, road-warn- and maybe he is, but right now he’s just tired of waiting for the coffee to brew. The glass carafe broke a year or so back, and he watches as the coffee drips directly into an oversized orange ceramic mug.
He takes his coffee black, which suits him well. He’s dark, black, bleak- he isn’t sweet like sugar or smooth like cream, he is a dark morass of emptiness, long past loneliness or despair- those things just made him a more durable piece of material. Standing at the window with the steaming mug in his fist he gazes out at the empty street, enjoying the early morning silence.
Wordlessly he makes his way to the bathroom, sets his coffee next to the sink and leans into the shower, adjusting the valves until the water scalds him. His plaid boxers drop to the floor and he steps under the hard stream of steam and heat, letting it pummel his skin, beating against him as if his chest and back are drums.
The steam rises around him, filling the small room. Whenever he stands in the shower he thinks of her. She was a long time ago, a distant memory, at this point an even mixture of pleasure and pain. Memories are arrows shot through time- they are no longer present yet they still inflict damage.
She was really beautiful- the mother of their child- she was graceful and delicate, intelligent, regal, sensuous, sexual- at one point they seemed to be joined physically- couldn’t keep each other’s name off their lips, could barely keep their hands off of each other. Today she doesn’t even speak to him.
They were together quite a while- years- a “whirlwind romance” as some people like to say, followed by a tumultuous relationship with all of it’s ups and downs. They loved each other fiercely and burned very brightly for quite a while, though they had their differences. In retrospect, probably a better than average relationship, up to the last year.
After the magic dissolved they still had their son to hold them together, and they both focused their waning love for each other upon him, renewing it, for a time renewing them, and again drawing them closer together. They still made love on the back porch underneath the stars from time to time, showered together by candle light- yet there were times when they didn’t speak for days, two ghosts occupying the same celestial space.
He was drinking a lot at that time, going out with his best friend Jason who was single at the time. She would let him go, knowing that ultimatums were an end of things. He and Jason would hit the bars, walking from one to the next, drinking to make the reality of the present soften and fade. When they were both single they’d shared a place, and were pretty close. Even so they would drift apart whenever they were in relationships, but always they came back together here and there as friends are wont to do.
They had a fight, he and she- a pretty big blowout- and she went to stay in her condo up North for a week, time to cool of and gather perspective. The baby was around two years old, and he would drop baby off at preschool and she would pick him up, and then the reverse the following day, alternately- so they didn’t have to see each other, didn’t have to speak. After a few lonely days of this he called her up and apologized, and she apologized also. He asked her to come home and she agreed, and said she would come tomorrow, after work. They both wanted to try again, and they both would for many years before they finally would part ways one last time to be forever separated yet always connected through the boy.

It was a week or so after she came home that he inadvertently picked up her phone thinking it was his own. He thumbed the send button and immediately knew it was hers, yet he was intrigued by several listings in a row, all showing the name “Fred Flintsone”. Thumbing the appropriate button he finds that she and Jason have been swapping calls for two weeks- lots of brief calls and a few long ones, more on the week that she was gone, but a few long ones during the day on the week after she returned. At first he was angry, then hurt, then a little amused that she had masked the name as “Fred Flintstone” rather than just erasing the call history. Stupid mistake for such a smart girl.

Every time he showers he thinks of her, pressed against someone else, hanging onto his best friend and telling him all the things she used to say to him. Even after all this time, even though that love between them has faded, every time he thinks of her he thinks of how she gave herself to his best friend and then quietly, wordlessly returned home to him. He knows her- she loves to have sex, always has. He knows Jason- Jason will nail anything with a heartbeat. After the fact he realized there was something quiet between them the whole time, right in front of him- it only took that week apart for them to consummate the physical act.

Every time he showers he thinks of her.

Every time he thinks of sex he thinks of her, with someone else.

Every time he thinks of relationships he thinks of betrayal.

Mostly he tries to just not think.




Psychiatrist: “So you’re still in touch with your son’s mom?”

The dark man: “Yeah- sure- I get my son every other weekend. I pick him up, give her some cash- she’s civil enough as long as I bring her some cash- doesn’t say much more than two or three words to me, though. I mean- come on- she‘s my son‘s mom- despite everything that‘s happened, there‘s always our boy to think about. ”

Psychiatrist: “What about Jason? You ever see him?”

The dark man emit’s a long sigh.


“Jason…… Yeah…… Jason..... he never knew what hit him.”

Evening In Summertime (Missing you.)
(563 words)

Evening in summertime, inland Southern California. The scent of wood smoke drifts on the breeze, filtering down through the branches of evergreens. Oak soot from wood fire, some from dad’s barbeque at the edge of the back porch- the rest remnants of the recently extinguished wildfires that blackened the hills to the East and North of us.
“Whap!” “Whap!” “Whap!” My brother and I toss the ball back and forth on the lawn next to the house. “Whap!” That positive impact of ball hitting mitt- years later this sound is just as reassuring as it ever was, the one certainty in life: If it hits the mitt with that solid “Whap!” it just isn’t coming back out.
“Whap!” The ball stings my hand through the mitt but I don’t dare tell my little brother. Instead I try to whip a little more speed into my return pitch.
“Whap!” I almost discern a wince. It barely registers on my brother’s face. He turns his head a little as if distracted and takes the ball from his mitt with his pitching hand. Windup- “whap!” This time there’s got to be a bruise on my hand but I keep it to myself, looking over at the barbeque a little to hide the tears forming at the corners of my eyes. That smarts.
I put everything I have in this next one, trying unsuccessfully to disguise my elaborate windup.
“Whap!” My brother whips off his glove and looks at his hand, the palm now red and a little swollen from the repeated abuse.
“Geezus Christ!” he looks to the heavens, mumbling.”.…trying to put a hole in me…” He rubs his palm. A smile appears on my face as I wipe the tears from my eyes with the tip of my forefinger.
My brother nods across the lawn at me, laughing. “Smoke get in your eyes?”
I nod the affirmative nod, coughing out an abrupt laugh back his direction. “Yeah- goddamn smoke.”
Screen door swings open and slams shut. Cats scatter leaving a flurry of dried leaves in their wake.
Dad is all business in a denim apron with a blue willow platter of meticulously marinated chicken parts balanced on one raised hand, tongs and a brush and a bowl of barbeque sauce gripped in the other. The picture of concentration, he lays each piece over the red-hot coals with care and precision, smiling only when we break him from his reverie to ask how long it’ll be until dinner.
Tongs held in midair he flashes us a smile, wiping his free hand on a towel dangling from his apron string.
“Boys? Dinner will be served in half an hour.” Focus returns to the task at hand, shifting and turning the meat constantly to ensure it is evenly cooked. He looks up again, catching us before we return to the important business of tossing a ball back and forth. “Why don’t you two do me a favor and go set the table?” A rhetorical question, I make one last half-hearted toss to my brother and pull my mitt off.
“Love you dad.” I say as I walk past towards the porch door.
Stopping again this time with a piece of chicken in midair he flashes me that same sincere smile, taking the time like he always tries to whenever he gets the chance. “Love you son.”

The man in the room in my head wants a TV and some cheap beer.

I don’t sleep too well. My brain is like a hummingbird on meth. Hyperactive brain- the dialog is non-stop. I quit fighting it a long time ago. I used to go to the gym at 4 a.m. By the end of a couple weeks I’d be a wreck, trying to function on like 3-4 hours of sleep a night, tops. So I just stay up. I put a movie on and I either read or I write, and sometimes equal parts of both. I like gangster movies- Gangster movies, War movies, Prison movies- the dialog works for me, and I find the glorified violence way better than the lies on the news. More people should watch glorified violence- the bar scene from Casino where Joe Pesci fucks that guy up with a ball-point pen. The Bar scene in Sleepers where the hoods kill the prison guard. Apocalypse Now. The end of American Me. If more people entertained thoughts of getting mercilessly beaten with a shovel or a length of pipe maybe there wouldn’t be so many people around who act like complete fuckheads because they know our society protects them- it’s like their constitutional right to be a shitheel. I love the look of surprise on a person’s face when you fuck them up for being a witless prick. It’s actually pretty gratifying to make fuckheads really scared. And don’t get me wrong- I love the ideas and ideals of the Dalai Lama- but until everyone wises up, there are witless assholes out there who have to be kicked to the curb.

I also like that a lot of the movies use the Stones for the soundtrack for particularly dark scenes. The Imagery of the Hell’s Angels at Altamont must have really burned itself into some heads.

Anyhow- I pulled down some old Henry Rollins stuff this week- The First Five Years and Solypsis. I tend to go back to certain stuff over and over: Rollins, Larry Fondation, Denis Johnson, Craig Davidson, Brett Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, Bukowski, Burroughs- the list is long but a lot of the work is similar in one way or another. Anyhow- I was reading this one passage from Rollins and it really made sense to me:

A bare bulb burns in an apartment in my brain. In the middle of the apartment is a small table and a wooden chair. There is a cot in the corner. Pacing the floor of the apartment is a man who has never slept, ever. He stares out the window constantly. He is scarred and insane from his thoughts. Everything he thinks is true. That’s why he lives alone. He writes words on the walls to remind and console himself.

I liked this- I think I have a little apartment in my brain, and the guy sprints around climbing the walls.

I’m going to go to bed and try to sleep. I bet the brain guy is climbing the walls as soon as I close my eyes, reciting Shakespeare and throwing around the furniture.

I leave the TV on while I sleep- so the little fucker has something to watch.

Playing Catch-up.

Judgement

2:32 a.m. November second, twenty-ten. Wont drink so I cant sleep. Tired of feeding the black, empty void inside of me. It’s never full, always ravenous until I’m unconscious. I listen to the radio make pedantic chatter about “Obamacare” and I wonder what the fuck they are talking about? I’m 45 and work for cash, have no retirement and get no benefits. It’s the only fucking job someone like me can get, and really I’m grateful I’m not living on a sidewalk somewhere covered in dirt. I’m just another casualty of the California school system, undiagnosed A.D.D. and a teenage alcoholic who fell through the cracks because I was middle class and white and tested with high scores. To them I was just another fuckup taking up space.

When I was 12 some well-meaning liberal assholes came up with a program called “voluntary integration” where the parents of pee-wee gang members from Sherman Heights could ride a bus over to our school on the coast to get a better education and to get them out of the “gang environment” where they lived. No hard feelings towards a few busloads of kids from Sherman, but our school was a fucking war zone the entire time I was there. The well meaning liberal assholes hadn’t considered that there were already several busloads of borderline criminals at our school teetering on the narrow precipice between a life working manual labor and a life in and out of the California Correctional System. Needless to say five years later most of us were reunited in scattered locations across the city. We’d see each other in emergency rooms, drug houses, court houses, Juvi and later county. After a year or two of buying the lie and fighting each other it dawned on most of us that we weren’t enemies- we weren’t allies- we were just casualties of a completely flawed system.

I’m luckier than most- I knew how to read and make complete sentences, so instead of prison or an early death I managed to last this long. 45 years- fuck- who ever would have predicted. At fifteen I figured I’d be lucky to see 18. At Nineteen I had no illusions about the slim chances of seeing twenty-five. Somewhere in there I quit counting years and instead counted off the intervals between funerals, only hearing a word now and then- usually years apart- of who was in or out of the can, who died and how. You never hear the good news- most of the alumni aren’t big computer guys- they don’t have Facebook at Pelican Bay.

I live alone. I see my kids every other week. I actually go to Parent Teacher conferences at my son’s school. Funny- I feel like a fish out of water at those things- all the soccer mom’s with their boob-jobs and their painted on smiles, the beaten down dads looking bored like they’d rather be on the couch or mowing a lawn or whatever it is they do. Lots of pretty young moms there, beautiful creatures with their dreams still intact. Here and there I see guys I think might be a little bit like me. Goddamn wolves in the henhouse. Sometimes worn out, time-hardened weary fuckers like me still love their kids enough to go sit in an auditorium like a fish out of water. I’ve done way harder things. I figure if I do this stuff, maybe my son will get a pass and a regular life, some dreams, a career that doesn’t include hammers and nails, a woman that loves him.

I’m a cynic, but I hold out a little hope for the kids.

After work today I pulled on some trunks and a tank-top and laced up my high-tops and walked around the corner to the basketball courts. I like to shoot hoop by myself after work. When you’re used to drinking, you have to find shit to do to fill that time. I think too much- time to think is my enemy right now. I think too much and I bum out- I look around me at all the vapid pop-culture and the advertisements telling me the things I can buy to have an image- I look at those glossy magazines in the check-out line at the grocers- and I bum out. I went to a therapist once, back when I had a job that gave me health insurance. I wanted to know why I was so fucked up in my head. The lady I talked to was really on it- I liked her- no bullshit. She was the one that told me I’m A.D.D. She said it was really amazing I’d handled as well as I had. She also told me that the reason I feel so fucked up is that for me, the magic is gone. There are no illusions for me- I look at a billboard and see lies. I listen to the TV- doesn’t matter what’s on- game show, the News, a commercial- and I ask, “What are you selling me?” and “Why?”

So I go shoot hoops. I put on my headphones to something that cranks me up to ten and I find an empty court and play. I didn’t shoot hoops for years- not since I was a kid- I never was a big “team-player”. But now it’s comforting. I don’t have to think- I just lob shots in and race in to grab them on the rebound- I jump and shoot, or pull off lay-ups. My right knee is a little fucked so I have to favor it, but it’s nice to sweat for an hour or two after work. To sweat and breath real oxygen, to feel the sun and to not think. It’s funny- I’m the only old guy out there, most of the time. Occasionally there will be a heavy set guy with a clipboard and “COACH” emblazoned on the back of his shirt, but otherwise it’s me and a bunch of kids. To them I’m invisible- I like that. I get my court, they don’t even see me, they just give me my space. That’s a good set-up for me. That would be nice in the rest of my life- just give me my space, don’t even see me.

I gotta try and sleep. Work at 7 a.m. There is no magic. What a fucking life.



11:42 November 4 2010

You just have to be strong- over the top. Unbreakable.
No one else can feel what you’re feeling.
No one else can fathom what you’re going through.
You try to convey it in words and they wink and say, “He’s quirky and weird.”
No- it’s better to keep your moth shut,
Your head down, a grim set to your jaw
Slip the punch and upper cut
Knock the fucking wind out of it
Be strong and tenacious
There is no rescue party
Either harden the fuck up or lay down and die

Be a piece of stone
Steel
Take care of you
Fuck them.


I sometimes look in the mirror and say “You’ll never be good enough.”
Sometimes I think, “You don’t deserve anything good.”

I step back and gesture to myself, standing there
And I ask myself, “How do you sleep at night, the things you’ve done, the people you’ve hurt?”
I glance over at my self and chuckle at the naiveté of the question. “ I don’t- I lay awake until three a.m. most nights, restless, bothered, at a loss- desperately tired yet unable to make the chatter stop. It’s my mind- it does that all on it’s own.

The only way to sleep is to drink myself unconscious- and that’s fucking weak. So I don’t sleep. Cest la vie.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

I see a pattern forming- a carrot-on-a-stick thing in which the powers that be- the big-money fat cats who manipulate the government- essentially keep the people anaesthetized. There are a lot of reasons this would be to their advantage, and there are a lot of ways this is implemented.
Back in the sixties a couple groups of citizens formed organizations which the government perceived as an imminent threat to the carefully constructed order of things in the United States. Prior to the sixties the public had largely accepted certain norms which began to lose their believability as the Vietnam war began to expose just how inept, criminal, racist and classist the United States Government had become.
The two groups of activists- the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground- proved effective enough to throw the FBI and local law enforcement agencies in cities around the country into a reactive campaign of harassment, oppression, civil rights violations, and illegal methods of investigation. These kids, through their extreme actions, incited the law enforcement agencies to shine the light of day on their own corruption and unethical practices. The ironic thing is that the two groups began with civil, peaceful protest. Peaceful protest is apparently ineffective in the United States.
On October 15, 1966 the Black Panthers formed in Oakland, California setting forth a doctrine that called primarily for the protection of African American neighborhoods from police brutality. They were essentially protesting civil rights violations against blacks, and the acceptance of racism in the United States both with injustices within law enforcement and judicial systems as well as accepted norms of racism amongst a large percentage of the white American populace. The difference between the Black Panthers and the Weathermen was largely one of skin color, as the Weathermen’s views were quite similar to those of the Panthers. But because the Weathermen were white (and also because the Weathermen were much more covert from early on, and therefore hard to keep tabs on) I think until Haymarket Police Memorial bombing October 7, 1969 the Weathermen were treated with more deference than the Black Panthers.
The Weather Underground began in 1969 as a student organization known as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) which was involved primarily in peaceful protest. In June of 1969 at the SDS National Convention a splinter group known as Progressive Labor took over the organization. Progressive Labor were comprised of students leaning towards more radical action, and soon changed the name of the group to the Weathermen (a reference to The Bob Dylan song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” which featured the lyrics “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”) They went on to become a radical group which bombed many public buildings from 1970-73. These bombing made it very easy for the press to vilify the organization, and they eventually realized that while they had certainly raised the awareness of young people in America to the many gross injustices the U.S. Government perpetrates every day, they could not go on doing this forever.

Between 1977 and 1980 most of the remaining Weathermen turned themselves in so that they could eventually live normal lives. Most of them did not serve time in prison, as the FBI had broken so many laws in their overzealous pursuit of the group that they prosecuting Attorney had a very weak case.
In today’s United States I don’t think a violent revolution would work, for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is that the U.S. Government is bigger and more oppressive than ever. Another reason is that law enforcement organizations now more than ever are groups of overbearing bullies with sophisticated weapons and diminished intellect, chiefly doing the bidding of the large corporations and special interest groups that hold the politician’s marionette strings. Another reason is that the press is complete rubbish and will print whatever sells, but rarely any actual “news”. Mostly the large corporate press is printing whatever the government will let them know. Censorship is alive and well, and I think maybe the press has devolved to believing that “infotainment” is journalism.
No- violent revolution would be quashed early on in decisive military actions which the press would glorify (the police would be portrayed as “heroic” while the political activists would be referred to as “terrorists”, their message purposely lost in the shuffle) and nothing would be gained.
A fantastic example of non-violent protest that produced profound and lasting results would be the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Montgomery Alabama. There are two stories to this, one in which Rosa Parks (link below) was riding a bus and when told to get up so a white man could have a seat she refused, making that decision spur-of-the-moment. The other story- one which was recounted by a Black Panther from the Oakland chapter (link below) said that the whole thing was planned by various ministers and neighborhood groups. Either way Rosa refused to get up and give her seat to a white man and she was arrested, a boycott was formed and the community stuck together despite physical violence, church bombings, police harassment- and 381 days later the black community prevailed and The Supreme Court ruled that segregated seating on public buses is unconstitutional.
Back to the carrot-and-stick idea, I believe what the powers that be are doing is either keeping the public distracted by shiny baubles or keeping us anaesthetized. The middle class are slaves to their wants and needs- they have to work hard to afford the most luxurious lifestyle of any working class on the planet. This leaves little time to organize a revolution. Flashy commercials set super-loud keep the public brainwashed that they must have the next I-phone, the new SUV, a Harley, fake tits, handheld video games, portable connectivity- whatever- and the people blindly eat it up. Basically television is a device used to “educate” the weak minded. I don’t care if it’s a commercial, a situation comedy, a drama, the news- everything on there is selling you something, and none of it is real or true. People should look at television and ask themselves, “What is it they don’t want me to be seeing when they show me this crap?” Because there is news out there- out in the real world- you just have to take the blinders off and ask the right questions- which is exactly what they don’t want you to do. Cheap beer, illicit drugs, vapid movies and television- all anesthesia to keep the people medicated.

The revolution will not be televised.
Change will come from education, a collective realization that we should be out creating something, adding value- that we aren’t the sum of what we buy, but rather our individuality comes from within- and in a sense from what we don’t buy.
Change will come from a collective refusal to be a mindless pawn that just consumes. A consumer revolt is in the wind. Right now corporations make brands, not goods- they market and sell by plastering their brand all around us, brainwashing the people into believing it’s cool. It is so NOT cool to purchase your identity, to goose-step in time with all the other “individuals” in a culture that emulates glossy magazine ads and derivative corporate tackiness. Today corporations basically tell us what we get- they don’t ask us what we want. Refuse to buy from them for a month or two and see how their attitude changes as they come to their customers on their knees asking what they can get us.
Prices are inflated, the goods we’re offered are mostly garbage, plastic tackiness who’s production was outsourced to sweat-shops in slave nations. There is too much plastic, which the earth can’t get rid of (getting rid of petroleum completely would be a great start towards extending our stay in this universe, BTW. Sure- we need cars and trucks for emergency and service/delivery vehicles, but otherwise public transit and bicycles are a great answer. We’ll need to go back to the old way of developing a community around stores, schools, and public buildings- but is that really a step backwards? Right now most of our communities are faceless and ugly.)
And of course maybe a lot of people in the United States will be indignant about their motor vehicles- like their cigarettes and cable television, they might not be able to live without them, despite the negative side-effects. And that’s okay- people should fight for what they believe in- but bottom line is that people should open their eyes and take a stand, one way or another. People should think- research- whatever- but they should not just accept blindly because some parasitic entity tells them that is what they should do. And in the end, if people take radical action like a consumer revolt- maybe a complete absence of petrol-driven motor vehicles isn’t the outcome we’re looking for. Perhaps we just want to light a fire under our bought-and-paid-for government and the corporations who own them, inciting them to enact change for a more ecologically conscientious mindset sooner. Because none of us want to fuck ourselves up- and none of us want to live in a place we don’t have access to the basic needs- food, shelter, potable water and clean air. It’s time to enact change, to change the way we live, and to demand change from our government and the corporations that tell them what to do.
Definitely the people of the United States need to wake up and look around. Our culture is vapid and greedy- we live more luxuriously than other countries not because we work hard, but because our government is overbearing and has a lot of weapons. And while we live luxuriously with nice cars and houses, do we really live better lives? Would it be so terrible to ride a bike or skateboard to and from work? Because truth be told you don’t have to be a scientist with a degree to see the folly of burning more fuel- you just need to smell the air in any modern city, and look at the color of the sky in Los Angeles or New York city.
For every vehicle we melt down and turn into bicycles and steel train rails we should turn under parking lots and plant gardens and fruit trees. Then in the absence of the deafening roar of a million engines we might hear the wind through the trees.
• Live healthier
• buy less
• think more
• create something beautiful
• be kind to each other
• and above all, be free.
The Weather Underground Video:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/118170/the-weather-underground
Culture Jammers headquarters:
https://www.adbusters.org/
John Trudell on the futuristic police state:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6id8kGegln0
Montgomery Bus Boycott:
http://www.africanaonline.com/montgomery.htm
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/Rosa-Parks-Dickson1dec05.htm
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