was one of two prize-winning haiku (unsure about punctuation; third line of the other was, I believe, “Next time, bazooka.”) performed at L.O.S.E.R.‘s Alexander Berkman Labor & Music Festival – which transpired at, yes, the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium. Typewriter Girls, who I still haven’t seen, bailed ’cause one of them was sick, but House of Assassins played some Berkman- and Pittsburgh-themed tunes; Jason Baldinger read a lengthy poem, “The Lady Pittsburgh”, accompanied by his bandmates and Steve Pellegrino (who also yakked a bunch, played some tunes of his own, did some skits and organized the event) on accordion; this dude David Hart gave a rather dubious overview of anarchism and quickie bios of Berkman and Goldman; and Green Party Senatorial candidate Mel Packer surprised me by not being a total scumbag – and, in fact, evinced a shocking degree of humanity for a local (or nonlocal) politician. Still not voting for him or anyone, but it’d be cool if he got to square off against the Demublican asshats in upcoming debates.
Recall that, as in video games, the monsters just keep coming ‘less you destroy the monster generator, have fun and cuídate.
While all the preparations and parties are fun, I do believe that we need to reflect, even if only for a few moments, on the fact that what we are commemorating here is not just a date or what happened more than two centuries ago in Philadelphia. What we are celebrating is something that many of us here in the United States take for granted and that much of the world desperately wants to have. What we are really celebrating this weekend are all the freedoms that we and our families enjoy on a daily basis.
Such as the freedom to be executed sans trial or even a sporting “Think fast!” by some human and/or robotic agent of HopeChangeDemocracy Empire, or the freedom to drink an entire bottle (or whatever it takes) of Zicam Cough MAX?
Happy 4th (plateau) and remember – there can be no free association without the freedom to disassociate.
So, this incident sort of listenscarefully to the days of, you know, segregation, almost? Even had Crooker used “harks back”, he’d still have to answer for his abuse of “almost” (I’d have gone with “not at all”).
He was humble, and said that indeed Portland is an interesting place to work; he said it is very hard and trying at times as he deals with murderers and gang members and drug addicts on a regular basis. People hear about the unfortunate police shootings, but rarely do they hear about the day in and day out reality of police putting their lives on the line and saving people.
As I was just starting to tell him how I agreed with him, and had a specific example – our friend who lived in North Portland, a 14 year old Sudan-refugee boy, who was shot at by gang members in North Portland and then called Portland Police who saved him – one of the owners of the cafe came over to us; I figured he was just going to say hello, but instead, what came out of his mouth shocked me.
Seigneur’s in good company with victims of the electric chair and the folks Tasered to death since those (you know, less than lethal, almost) weapons bumped billy clubs for pride of place in police arsenals. There are so many funny things about Seigneur’s post, from her inconsistent capitalization (of “police”, in particular) to her closing paragraph, which implies she and her daughter found a place for police toget, not just coffee, but her and her daughter as well. (If this type of humor is to your taste, Seigneur keeps going and going and going.) Comments are pretty awesome too, especially one from this morning by JS, which begins, “Let it be known that the red and black cafe is a sanctuary for anarchists, conspiracy theorists, malcontents, losers and morons.”
We here at Pittsburgh Α to Ω have long labored to provide a safe space for the above groups, and salute the Red and Black for leaving us in the dust in this regard. Losers and morons of the world, ituneuntie unite! Anyhow, upshots of all the press appear to be, for the Red and Black, a big spike in biz, and, for some cops, a bunch of free coffee. At a press conference, Red and Black’s John Langley gave some reasons why the segregation comparison is so odious, but Roderick Long did so far more pithily in the comments thread of his own post (which initially tipped me off to this story). He writes, “A cop walking into an anarchist outfit is like someone walking into a black restaurant wearing a Klan outfit, or walking into a Jewish deli wearing a Nazi uniform,” and, “It’s not like droids wanting to be served in a cantina, it’s like slavecatchers wanting to be served in an abolitionist cafe.” Straight up.
Whatever his faults as an orator, Langley’s concern for patrons’ safety (or that of the merchandise/café itself) makes sense not only in light of “the day in and day out reality of police” (which naturally includes having it in for their most principled critics), but, specifically, in light of two recent instances of police blowing up food. And, while there’s no evidence Crooker had any intention of getting all Liberty Avenue on the Red and Black’s vegan pastries, it’s like Nate Harper said about the Pittsburgh Marathon ravioli detonation: “We rather err on the side of safety than err on the side of not taking anything serious … and have something terrible go on.”
PIRACY is the maritime ripple effect of anarchy on land. Somalia is a failed state and has the longest coastline in mainland Africa, so piracy flourishes nearby. The 20th-century French historian Fernand Braudel called piracy a “secondary form of war,” that, like insurgencies on land, tends to increase in the lulls between conflicts among great states or empires. With the Soviet Union and its client states in Africa no longer in existence, and American influence in the third world at an ebb, irregular warfare both on land and at sea has erupted, and will probably be with us until the rise of new empires or their equivalents.
1 min: “This is, I think, my point. I believe the government can play a role. I think we’ve been given a false choice between tyranny and anarchy. D’ya understand wh’I'm sayin’? Why not try competent government intervention, just to throw it out there? Because, everybody’s comfortable with them running the military.”
Anarchy – still less pie-in-the-sky than the leading alternative.