So, as the first month draws to a close, the infoshop is coming along in its own, anarchistically-slow way, for those of you familiar with such feelings. It's good though - we're getting our hands dirty and figuring things out as we go along, instead of following some leadership or comforming to a hollow movement. We met yesterday and divided up territory in the neighborhood to canvass to let people know what we're doing and find out how we can properly cater to the community.
The activist community, while it has shown significant support thus far for our first fundraiser, has been at best a trickle in terms of foot traffic. Obviously it's fairly irritating in some respects, but I'm not going to complain too much about being able to sit in a comfy, quite space with a small library of fantastic reading materials; nope, not this little anarcho.
So anyways, we're depending on some community support so we can solidify the project a little bit. That's the way to do it anyways. Otherwise, we'll have to focus more on events and charging people admission, which can be tough to find a worthy attraction. Fortunately I've already started lining up some prospective events.
Besides that, as a result of some landlady trouble, whose top floor we rent in her house, my partner and I will be moving mid-October to a much more convenient location for about the same price. Kind of a pain in the ass in general, but fortunately I kind of like moving. I've done it a whole buncha times now at the tender age of 20, and it's a bit of an adventure.
The new locale is on the outskirts of downtown Hartford, technically in the Frog Hollow south-end neighborhood. And of course as a bike messenger and a community college student, being that close to downtown will be a welcome change to the half-hour bike commute (10 min car drive in good traffic if I'm not feeling up to it, and 30 min if traffic is typical). Plus it's right next to my favorite hang-out (besides the infoshop, ah, who am I kidding?), a cool radical Puerto Rican cafe.
Fun.
In terms of the One Big Union, I sat down and talked with another local Wob last week about general things as well as my workplace specifically. I've been working at this place since last November, and I've made next to no headway in terms of organizing a Job Branch. But, to my credit, I've done my homework in a big way. So, when I do finally work up the courage (or get lucky, whichever comes first) we'll know what we're doing. The last thing I wanna do is fuck up a good thing - for myself as well as for the guys on the job who have families.
That's probably why it's taken so long. I'm just kinda scared shitless of doing more harm than good. Paralysis is a powerful thing. Why is it that my whole life follows the same pattern as when I would spend months at a time in agony just trying to work up enough courage to talk to a girl in middle school? I've gotten better about that sorta thing, but when it comes to tough stuff, it's just the same old shit. But enough self-pity.
I'm hoping that with the help of another fellow radical student at my school that I met a couple weeks ago, we'll be able to start doing propaganda/resource distro work, specifically with workplace/IWW-related issues. Maybe that'll appeal more to the largely working student body than anti-war organizing, which was my pitch last year. Didn't go so well.
Let's see . . . there wa something else I wanted to mention.
Ah yes. In response to my long-held irritation with the anti-war movement, locally and in general, I'm going to be submitting a resolution to the upcoming conference being held by the local state-wide peace coalition. The resolution will be a call for a week of autonomous action at the end of April. My hope is that, first and foremost, it will open people up to different organizing methods that are more empowering and exciting than marches and pep rallies, and to see how regular folks respond to this type of event in terms of participation in contrast to conventional (in)action.
I really want to break people out of this whole following-mentality that "leads" people to believe that in order to end the war, all you have to do is mobilize enough people under the right banner, to listen to the right speakers, and shout the right chants, all the while having little or no access to the decision-making processes used to make actions against the war manifest. Ideally, greater participatory and *grassroots* (community-based) democracy in the movement will lead people to innovate their own tactics and strategies, instead of another vanguard think-tank coming up with all the A.N.S.W.E.R.'s. And therefore, we may get some semblence of a real, effective movement. Fuck UFPJ, fuck ANSWER, fuck MoveOn.
Smash Capital, *FUCK* the Vanguard
Yours for the OBU,
m(A)tt
