October 05, 2008
Nowtopian Has Moved to a New URL!
Find this blog in a new location...
http://www.nowtopians.com/
I won't be back here to post any more!.... I still have to retrieve all the photos, but it's a very labor intensive process, so until I have time, the images will keep linking from here as long as my friend Brian leaves this up and running... but for new writing and photography, redirect your subscriptions and links to the new site:
http://www.nowtopians.com/
Posted by ccarlsson at 07:20 PM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2008
Battle of Seattle
Went to see the movie last night with a bunch of friends--about half of us were there in Seattle, drumming in the streets as the Committee for Full Enjoyment, where we also distributed this postcard and text, "Life Not Trade!" I wrote about the WTO/Seattle events a month or so after it happened, and I just posted that old essay "Seeing the Elephant in Seattle" here.
So it was with real curiosity that I went to see the new movie "Battle of Seattle" last night. It's pretty bad. I'd already heard it was terribly sexist, that it has a weirdly pro-life moment tucked into it, that it sucked... It wasn't as bad as I expected. But it's a poor cartoon version of the real deal, and badly distorts historical truth to tell a clichéd Hollywood version of events. Notably it makes it seem as though there was one good-looking, charismatic guy who was somehow at the epicenter of events, omnisciently calling in various affinity groups to seize intersections on his walkie-talkie, bawling out black block window breakers, charming the semi-tough militant woman, and basically being the Hero where there really wasn't one. Not a second of this film attempts to show the fascinating, complicated decision-making structure that actually drove events, that continues to this day in summit after summit, and represents a real break from old-style leftist organizing as much as it is a break from the conceptual universe of this filmmaker.
In essence, he's made a propaganda film from the point of view of left-liberal critics of the WTO and globalization. The filmmaker wants to be on the team, so he shows the criticism of the WTO's lack of transparency, its supranational governing powers, etc. He even ends the film with a quick rundown on the continuing opposition to the WTO and its failure to get out of the Doha round. OK, but there's so much more to it than that. Why not include arguments from the more radical point of view? Why not include arguments from the pro-WTO leftists, like the Doctors Without Borders guy who is portrayed several times giving his sad lecture to delegates? The film is deeply unsatisfying--ideologically it's one-dimensional; as narrative film it's a cardboard cartoon; as history, it's just plain false on key aspects. The horrible acting and dialogue really worsens the whole experience. (Woody Harrelson as a cop who goes to the jail to apologize to the Hero who he beat up? Ray Liotta as the sympathetic and humanist mayor trying to honor protesters' rights and keep the cops at bay? Charlize Theron as a sales clerk in a fancy store, married to Woody Harrelson's cop, who miscarries after being jabbed in the belly by a passing cop in the streets? What the f---?) The only thing that makes it worthwhile is that it features a great deal of documentary footage from the actual events (one of our gang last night even appeared for a split second, to our delight), and in no way falls for the self-justifications of globalizers... but given the money spent, this is a pretty weak movie as a movie, as history, as political education... oh well!
Posted by ccarlsson at 03:54 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2008
How topia.... Now!
Departing from my usual travelogues and pretty pictures, I want to make a quick entry that gives some links to anyone who might come upon my book, or this blog, and want to just start doing things...
First of all, there are two books out there that are interesting "cookbooks" for Nowtopian projects. First I'll plug Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew's new book "Toolbox for Sustainable City Living." Scottie appeared with me on Monday night at the Troy Sanctuary for Independent Media (hopefully that Talk will appear in some weeks on FreeSpeech TV). Food, Water, Waste, Energy, and Bioremediation are their chapter titles, and the book is chock full of useful illustrations and instructions on how to start converting your everyday life in a sustainable direction. The other book is "Do It Yourself: A Handbook for Changing Our World" by the Trapese Collective in England. They make a longer political argument alongside their many how-to sections, and are much more forward about being anti-capitalist, probably because they're not in the U.S.
My pal Melinda Stone has launched a wonderful new website, How To Homestead, which rather than putting long texts and illustrations in front of you, offers a series of straightforward how-to videos, very well produced and presented.
Next weekend all the DIY Bike Co-ops and Collectives from around North America are coming to San Francisco for their annual conference BikeBike... lots of workshops and tours and amazing people.
Then there's the P2P foundation's "Product Hacking" wiki, where you can get tons of practical how-to instructions on repurposing the technologies of our lives. Another remarkable resource is the Open Source Ecology wiki at Openfarmtech, where you can find out how to build your own reaper or practically any other useful machine.
I have often linked to and recommended John Robb's work on Resilient Communities and do it again now, because he is one of the few guys out there who is continously writing about intelligent approaches that anyone can jump in to, that really address the cascading systems collapses of our time. (If you scroll back over the past summer on his blog you will find many fantastic entries that touch on this topic.)
And if you're jonesing for some intelligent political analysis in this moment, I highly recommend Turbulence out of Europe. Boxes and boxes have just arrived here in San Francisco, so if you're local I can give you a copy. You can also download it directly at the link. I particularly recommend John Holloway's piece called "1968 and doors to new worlds" which refreshingly goes beyond the platitudes of left and labor politics to talk about abstract labour and the deeper revolt against the reduction of human life to the commodity form.
I was choking on my cereal this morning as former AFL-CIO bigwig Bill Fletcher on Democracy Now! went on and on about how unions have to become champions of everyday Americans in the face of the "socialistic" bailout of the millionaires who owned all the financial institutions that have gone bankrupt. Give me a break! The unions are moribund, and haven't done anything but enforce the terms of capitalist exploitation for decades now. To expect some kind of reversal from them is to be incomprehensibly myopic and ahistorical... why, it's like expecting Obama to come into office and turn on the Wall Street financiers who bankrolled his campaign, the coal and nuclear interests he's been pandering to, the conservative economic advisors he's lined up as his team, and the imperialists he's collected as foreign policy advisors... Imagine Obama will be good for humans as opposed to a black pwogwessive face for American Capital, exciting the world once again about the American Way of Life? Puh-leeeze... But that doesn't mean I don't clearly prefer him over the morons on the other side, lanced brilliantly in Tim Wise's piece on Palin's White Privelege. Check it out!
Posted by ccarlsson at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)
September 16, 2008
From Redesigning Cities to Industrial Ruins
I've been on the NY subway 7 times already today and have two more to go before getting to the airport in an hour or so... The noise in New York is really oppressive, but there are so many remarkable subtle things going on that sometimes you are charmed beneath the roar. An hour ago I was on the L train crossing into Queens and a young guy in front of me in a blue shirt with black sneakers sat strumming in his lap a tiny ukelele... he was practicing, more or less to himself, but it was suddenly just what I needed, transporting me far from the maddening screeches and rumble of the subway, its incessant clamor completely dominating. Earlier, as I entered the city in the upper east side on my way to meet Francesca at a museum (I had come from Penn Station where I was on the train down from Troy early this a.m.) I had that wonderful feeling upon ascending into the street at Lexington and 86th... New York! I breathed deeply, drinking it in, the endless sea of 30-story apartments in every direction, the cacophony of taxis and buses and trucks, the bustle and frenzy of pedestrians of all sorts... Nothing comes quite close to the specific sense of New York... ahhhhh.
Note the creek running down the middle of the tracks and the utterly decrepit state of this G line station. The NY Subway wouldn't last two days without constant effort to prevent flooding.
I wrote the rest of this on the train some hours ago:
I had a great time on Saturday hanging out with old friends Chris W. and Donald N-S, mostly in Donald’s apartment, then a brief walk through Grand Union Plaza where there is about 30 different displays of potential redesigns that visitors are asked to vote on with their cell phones. We had a lot of laughs, talked a lot of politics and life, and by late afternoon I headed over to Penn station to make my way to Highland Park, New Jersey, where Leigh and Bruno were hosting me for an evening get-together with their friends and neighbors.
About 15 folks showed up, mostly older, though one gal who was in her twenties (a “Christian anarchist”!... emphasis on the “Christian” I deduced from a brief conversation). I gave my Nowtopia talk in muggy east coast heat, fans struggling to push the turgid air around while we all sat sweating in the darkening night. The crowd liked the talk, and a pretty good discussion ensued. The highlight for me, which carried on the next morning, was hearing about Bruno’s work and situation. He’s a child psychologist, and as he describes it, he feels like a polar bear on an ever-shrinking patch of ice in the sea. He works for a hospital which he finds surprising for the great diversity of its client population, and described (in the wake of my talk about class composition, time theft, etc.) how he has eeked out some time, unpaid, with some coworkers, to create a small garden where they try to bring the kids they’re working with. Once the kids are finished with the hospital setting, they’ve managed to connect to Sustainable South Bronx and get some kids to carry on their newly discovered gardening activity there. (Highland Park is next to New Brunswick and Rutgers University, about 45 minutes south of NYC by train.) He also recounted growing up in an Italian neighborhood in Camden, across from Philadelphia, where the baker, the butcher, and all the old small neighborhood businesses were run by other families, how they organically shared their products in picnics and festivals, each filling their niche, everyone looking out for each other’s kids, etc. As he noted, it’s a bit like we’re all trying to recreate that world that existed in urban ethnic enclaves, though nowadays perhaps with a greater openness to diversity. On the other hand, part of what knits together such communities is precisely the sharp definition of “inside” and “outside” and if you’re outside, you’re really not welcome. Interesting to ponder in the midst of seeing new communities forming—part of my conclusion is always to critically note the subcultural exclusivity that sometimes permeates some Nowtopian communities (not to mention the sanctimonious self-righteousness that provides its foundation!).
Leigh was the person who invited me, and she, like me, has a long pedigree in political activism, starting in the 1970s with anti-nuke work. She had read both Nowtopia and After The Deluge, and was a warm and enthusiastic host. We had an easy and automatic affinity. Some of the folks who came over for my talk were old politicos too, probably ex-CPers, but at least half seemed like they didn’t have a huge political background. Over breakfast Leigh explained a bit about her job, which is in pharmaceutical advertising. Pays great, she’s able to steal a lot of time and resources to do her political activities, and she’s a great mole inside the beast. We chatted about the absurdity of the drug biz, how the big companies are of course not interested in selling cures for anything but want people to get on permanent daily regimes that require them to take their drugs, e.g. all the cholesterol control drugs, which are basically designed to manipulate the numbers that appear in blood tests, but have no real effect on people dropping dead from heart attacks. Leigh and Bruno occupy different niches in the medical-industrial complex, and have different relationships to their work, Bruno doing good work while being increasingly hemmed in by the Managed Care bureaucracies that work so hard to eliminate his function, or to make it utterly meaningless, while Leigh is able to thrive in the bifurcation, thinking very dark thoughts about what her biz does, but carrying on to make the easy big bucks and diverting her energy and resources to subversive activities. Together they embodied a snapshot of two sides of our contemporary relationship to work.
After spending the night I took the train back to Manhattan where I had a charming lunch with my old friend Lisa S. at a timeless Italian place not too far from Penn Station. The extremely grumpy woman who was running the place was kind of like Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi, but we enjoyed the air conditioning and quiet space for chatting and catching up. Afterwards we strolled over to Broadway at Times Square to enjoy the new public space that’s been inserted into the street. A funny juxtaposition, planters and tables and chairs, a smattering of folks sitting and having lunch or coffee, a newly green-colored bike lane skirting the space between the common zone and the sidewalk (yay! An actual separated sidepath in a major urban center in the U.S.! Finally!), but looming over it at the northern edge where it meets Union Square was a guard tower of that ubiquitous military occupation force, the NYPD.
Continue reading "From Redesigning Cities to Industrial Ruins"
Posted by ccarlsson at 02:00 PM | Comments (5)
September 12, 2008
Scattered Thoughts from eastern N. America
While tooling around Toronto with various cycling friends we passed this site, which is the home to Igor's used bike shop...It's a hilarious and weird story: Igor was stealing bikes by the thousands and many of them were piled up in various spaces around town. He got busted recently, and his store is boarded up, the cops are inviting people down to peruse his fleet to see if they can find their stolen bikes... This funny commentary was sprayed on the building:
On the last da of my awesome visit to Toronto I visited the Centre for Social Innovation, which is the fantasy space for everyone who ever tried to set up an incubator for radical projects. It's got about 100 participating groups and individuals and all in all it made me salivate like a greedy fool... here's a couple of shots of the interior, which don't really capture its grandeur (shared meeting rooms, kitchen, etc.):
They have a thriving native grassland on their roof too. Here's a couple of shots, me and Janet "Bike Girl" Attard, who was incredibly generous and gave me tshirts, postcards, posters, and a whole pile of beautiful art. She's a fantastic stencil artist!
Continue reading " Scattered Thoughts from eastern N. America"
Posted by ccarlsson at 09:52 AM | Comments (5)
September 09, 2008
Hamming it up in Toronto and Hamilton
The fun has been nonstop for me on this trip. On Sunday, after a rainy morning, the sun graciously appeared in time to allow my reading at "This Ain't The Rosedale Library" to go forward, on the street-side patio as planned. I'm not going to rehash each appearance... let's just say, clearly, that all my Canadian stops, and all the folks I'm meeting here, are just fantastic. Great crowds, really engaging dialogues during Q&A and afterwards, lots of local initiatives being brought to my attention, many confirming my general line of thinking... So here's a couple of shots, taken by Yvonne again, from the Rosedale talk:
Being on the street led to a couple of moments, like when some folks were leaning on a local crank's car and he came over bellowing about staying off it and I awkwardly paused in mid-sentence, only to enthusiastically support sanctity of his vehicle and private property in general, while pointing out that leaning on cars doesn't do them any damage... he dropped it and went back to his drinking across the street. A bunch of geezers over there had the look of people who were going to start heckling, but they never did... Anyway, being outside made it easy for people to come and go, and lots did, so who knows how many got some or all of it? maybe 40 or so?.... Here I am with the father-and-son owners of the place, Charlie and Jess, both lovely guys:
Later that night there was a gathering of plotters to plan the upcoming Carfree Day festivities in Toronto (Sept. 21-ish)... It was fun to see a whole different gaggle of people enmeshed in their various factions and styles of discussion and meeting, and not have a personal stake in the outcome. But I have to say, the local scene in Toronto is SUPER impressive. A fantastic bunch of people firing on many cylinders across the range of initiatives, from cycling to reclaiming streets, Critical Mass, bike shops, great musicians, and more...
Continue reading "Hamming it up in Toronto and Hamilton"
Posted by ccarlsson at 07:15 AM | Comments (1)
September 07, 2008
Quack 'n Track
I'm in Toronto, having a magical visit, so graciously hosted, so enthusiastically met in so many ways! It started with Toronto Cyclist Union activist (among many hats) Yvonne Bambrick meeting me at the airport and giving me a lucid download about local politics, transit fights, etc. while we bussed into the city. As we emerged from the subway later, Shamez, whom I'd met in Portland earlier this summer and was responsible for luring me here, met us with his rickshaw, ready to bring me straight to the famous Cinecycle where the Pages Bookstore "This Is Not A Reading Series" event was to be held about 15 minutes after my arrival. I was quizzed by Matt Blackett, publisher of Spacing magazine, a really interesting publication here in Toronto.
Here is Shamez bringing me to the door of Cinecycle just in time for my appearance...
The dialogue was pretty one-sided in that Matt threw me a question and I'd just go off, having to remember to pause after a while and get another prompting question. The audience was at least 50-60 people, maybe more, and it was great fun to meet Marc and Martin (?) who run Cinecycle with the incomparable Janet "Bike Girl" Attard. She showered me with gifts at the end of the night, t-shirts, posters, beautiful stencil art and gave me a tour of her impressive studio that is in the big 401 Richmond art building. The Q&A was interesting, but as usual, I'm so adrenalized that I can't remember specific questions later, just that many people seemed inspired and engaged. One older hippie guy wanted me to suggest what he should do, now that his money bin was running dry, and he didn't want to go back to a wage-labor gig... What could I say? Get a job! but I tried to be a little more subtle about it... Longer term maybe we can grow Nowtopian initiatives to the point that we can actually sustain ourselves without cash for long or even indefinite periods of time, but clearly it ain't like that yet!
As an author, much as I'm railing against money and markets, I always have the end-of-the-Talk moment when book sales happen, or not, and yes, it feels good when lots of folks buy the book, which they have done at each of my stops so far. Here I am talking to Theo, a Bike Pirate, while signing books.
This photo is by Yvonne Bambrick, who takes great photos, many more of which are here.
Friday was a crazy day because Aurora R. here had done an incredible job of setting me up with radio interviews. So after staying out until 2 a.m. eating a great steak dinner with Yvonne and Shamez, I slept about 5 hours and got up to start my radio day at 8:30 a.m. with a half hour chat with Guelph Community Radio on their "Wake Up!" show. At 10:20 I was on CIUT, Univ. of Toronto, "The Green Majority"... a half hour chat with Murray Whyte of the Toronto Star by phone led to this interview in the Sunday paper today. Then I went to PROUD-FM radio for all of about 4 minutes with Shawn Proulx, who is a bike enthusiast but didn't quite know what to do with me, unable to find a box I'd fit in... finally at 5:30 I was on for a half with John Moore on a big drive-time AM radio station CFRB, and we got a half dozen calls mostly from cranky old white guys in the 'burbs who were adamant that Toronto was built for cars, and would always be a car-centric city, punto final! But Moore is a big cyclist and though he's not plugged in to the local activist scene, it was interesting to realize that a big-name local drive-time DJ is actually a daily cyclist public transit rider who eschews the car as much as possible...
Another small example of how these Nowtopian sensibilities really are percolating in all kinds of surprising places. By the way, Orion Magazine excerpted a bit from the introductory parts of Nowtopia into a Point of View essay "Building the Anti-Economy" and there are comments piling up there, so feel free to join the discussion! And here's a charming Nowtopian project that is percolating along quietly in Los Angeles (I've learned about a similar effort here in Toronto, the Urban Repair Squad)...
Continue reading "Quack 'n Track"
Posted by ccarlsson at 10:32 AM | Comments (2)
September 02, 2008
Living Well Now
A weird and exhilarating Critical Mass last Friday started a fantastic and busy weekend of fun... The Committee for Full Enjoyment put out a new flyer (pdf) commenting on how little things have changed after 16 years of riding in Critical Mass. Here's a couple of images that Adam Aufdencamp shot, one in the Marina and another as we were climbing the very steep and long Presidio hill in deep fog... places we've never been on Critical Mass. (Lately it's been great how much we've found our way to new spots in the city, but this past Friday was frustrating because whoever was in front never stopped until an hour into the ride, having left hundreds of riders far behind, many of whom bailed.)
The big Slow Food Nation event went off better than anyone expected. I volunteered to work at the Food For Thought discussion on Saturday afternoon, featuring all the big names of the new food politics: Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, Vandana Shiva, and Wendell Berry. I got to hear their speeches, and generally I was quite impressed. I jotted a few notes... Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation, a great book) followed Wendell Berry with a pointed call to bring food workers to the table. (The event's slogan was "Come to the Table.") He emphasized how poor most food workers are, and how excluded they are from the focus on taste, conviviality, gardening, etc. Following Wendell Berry was fitting, since one of Berry's main arguments for decades has been to repopulate the countryside, re-establish an honorable and adequately rewarded life for farming, and radically decentralize food production.
Continue reading "Living Well Now"
Posted by ccarlsson at 12:06 PM | Comments (3)
August 29, 2008
Eco Mots
Obama and the Alaskan Nut-job governor... how to decide?... let's see, Obama is FOR "clean" coal (an oxymoron of the first degree) and "safe" nuclear power (another one)... the Alaskan will be off her rocker FOR drilling, warring, babymaking, suppressing dissent (oops, wait, Obama will probably be for suppressing dissent too, but he won't have to do much because the broad American pwogwessive (non)movement will paralyze itself waiting for Him to fix everything)... would we prefer a blowhard corporate shill with an unknown but vociferous female ideologue of the crazy right, or... an articulate proponent of American power, elected to restore legitimacy to a highly illegitimate and dysfunctional political and economic system? (with an old windbag egomaniac, Senator "Chemicals & Credit Cards," as his sidekick)... Dontcha just love American presidential politics?
I would prefer to hear the hesitant and calibrated rationalizations of Obama, I admit, but only because it's more interesting to see how that wing of Capital tries to manage the unfolding crises, NOT because I think he'll be "good" for anyone or anything that I care about... "less bad" maybe, but only maybe... And that energy policy based on coal and nuclear? That's a serious nightmare and will require very substantial mobilization to resist its insane implementation, so start your (anti)engines...
Yah, let's just jump in the pool and fuggedaboudit... (I really hated this billboard campaign, and find this an appropriately cynical riposte.) But I've been living in my usual ecologically compromised-but-thinking-about-it way... Here's a photo I just took from the top of Twin Peaks yesterday, with a water bottle I got when I volunteered on the Victory Garden at Slow Food Nation (open today at Civic Center and Fort Mason):
There's a nice booth at the Slow Food Nation pavilion in Civic Center to "Reclaim The Tap" decorated with dozens of discarded plastic water bottles. I'm very enthusiastic about San Francisco tap water, and public water supplies in general. It's one of the great stealth privatizations of our era, the creeping paranoia that has infected so many people to make them think that clean, drinking water from the tap is somehow suspect and unhealthy... thus they buy ridiculous quantities of small containers that hold... tap water (most of the time!)...
Posted by ccarlsson at 02:22 PM | Comments (8)
August 12, 2008
Pot-purring
Dimitri Orlov, whose book "Reinventing Collapse" I mentioned in the last post, has a very illuminating blog post out explaining the events in George, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in a way that you just can't get from all the propaganda organs we're normally subjected to... I also recommend Asia Times where there's been a lot of good coverage from a variety of angles. Amy Goodman interviews Colonel Gardiner about it yesterday, also interesting, and he said he figured the Russians had planned for a U.S. intervention and had made it clear they'd go all the way to tactical nuclear weapons if the U.S. sent in military units to defend Georgia's assault on South Ossetia. Nothing to worry about! Just keep your eyes on the Olympics!
At 18th and Dolores in front of the cafe where the Google shuttle stops daily, someone has painted this on the ground. Recently Carol Lloyd in the SF Comical wrote about the effect of googlers on SF real estate, which might have given impetus for this...
I realize I have been slipping again, now that I'm back in my daily life in San Francisco. It's not that I wouldn't love to have the time to ponder and post at least weekly, but I'm spending about 40+ hours a week on the Shaping SF wiki, which we've decided to roll out to the public by October 15. (That many hours on computing purposefully makes it reeeeeaaaallly hard to blog... just sayin'.) I'm experiencing some layers of deja vu as I once again plow through all this familiar material that I knew SO well 10 years ago... yep, it's been 10 years since the original version rolled out (slightly more, Jan 98)... I've also been enjoying the new life that comes with Adriana having moved in during the summer. So, all things considered, I'm not as available as I'd like to be for blogging...
Oddly enough I was offered an online radio show, 13 1-hour slots as a pilot program, but it turned out to be one of those "deals" where I would have to find a sponsor, or come up with $7K, neither of which interests me. I'm also facing the prospect of launching a new magazine if I can develop a coherent enough editorial philosophy. Part of me would be delighted to do another magazine, another part of me thinks, "why?"... been there, done that, though not as a "job"... but then I'm still quite happily avoiding anything approaching a regular job, which feels like the basic minimum to me now after so many years of freedom. My income is way down, but my expenses are too, so it's ok so far...
I have a number of local appearances coming up:
This weekend I'll be at the San Francisco Writing for Change Conference, speaking at 11 a.m. on Saturday, on Nowtopia and the writing process that helped bring it about. Next Thursday I'll be presenting at The Abundance League, a charming group of folks who are trying to shift paradigms in ways that I'm enthused about. And then on Saturday the 233rd I'll be giving a labor history tour to some visiting Egyptian labor reps during the day, and giving a Nowtopia reading at 7 pm at Red Hill Books on Bernal Heights.
Continue reading "Pot-purring"
Posted by ccarlsson at 08:44 PM | Comments (1)
