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September 27th, 2005
07:25 am - Dude, is that polyester? That's not cool. (continued)
One of the funniest posts I ever made, imho, was this one about the Olympia Food Co-op t-shirt policy. Well guess what? This is a follow-up post. If you haven’t read that one, and it’s from June 2003 so many of you haven’t, go read it. I’ll wait.
Ok, now that you’re up to speed we can continue.
Back up in Olympia a couple of months ago I was wandering around the backstock area and found a handout to help explain the t-shirt policy to the poor hippie boys who can’t seem to find their t-shirts. I thought I had lost it after showing it to everyone whose path I crossed driving cross-country. But cleaning out my wallet, I just found it again and scanned it for your reading pleasure. Here it is:
I don’t honestly know what else I can add. Except to point out that the reason we don’t allow* un-clothed folks is that we’re a food store and that is gross. Keep those underarm hairs and pointy bits out of the bulk section!
My favorite part is the "don’t assume that just because the female staff is being paid to work here, that they will answer your questions". Second favorite: "We do not wish to be fashion police". Third: "Someday, hopefully,… we may all wear what we please." I know that’s what I’m fighting for.
My friend is going to hate me for this.
*Close readers will notice that an occasional pants-less junkie or street fest attendee may wander in. But we do kick them out or ask them to clothes-up if we see ‘em.
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March 27th, 2004
09:32 am - Check yourself, Nothwesterners
For some reason, people in the Northwest are obsessed with San Francisco being the home of hippies. At least three different people made some comment about how it must be hard to have to deal with it, how it doesn’t match my personality so it seems funny I live in the Bay Area etc. This has never happened to me before.
Now, one of these was excusable because I was explaining how I buy vegan "cheese" from some woman named Angel who lives in a converted bus.* But the other cases were clear cut cases of projection. It seems somehow settling for post-punk people to think that because they see a lot of bad hippie fashion, it must be worse in SF.
News flash from 1985, almost all the hippies, and especially the young, Phish-head neo hippies, have been priced out of the Bay Area. Where do they live? The Pacific Northwest! I know there are pockets of ‘em in Arcata and Humboldt, but if you wanna talk cities, I’ve never seen so many bad white boy dreads (aka Matlocks**) as in Portland. And Eugene may have its primitivist anarcho-morons, but there’s just a fine line between crusty and hippie. When it’s time to mellow out, just trade the black and shiny for some Guatemalan peasant clothing and bam, you’re there.
I know this is a relatively insignificant matter, but I was surprised how often this concept came up in only a 10-day trip.
*Sadly, she took off all the info about bus conversions that used to take up half of her website. I guess she’s trying to improve her marketability. No matter how many times you explain that the "cheese" is made in a commercial kitchen and not the back of the bus, you get a certain image that scares some people off. Go figure.
**Thanks to Feelings on a Grid for this lovely phrase.
Current Music: LKJ - "Fite Dem Back"
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October 24th, 2003
09:53 am - Non-violently twinkling my way into your heart
I kind of opened a can of worms with my last post by using the phrase "non-violent snapping". As someone who works in a collectively-run business and who is at least a part-time activist, I’ve had the "opportunity" to attend a lot of meetings over the years. The political meetings especially have become so alienating to me that I think they must be part of an ongoing COINTELPRO operation against the left.
As part of a multi-coop task force, I read a lot of the literature on meeting process before we all gave up due to the sheer boredom involved in compiling a handbook. One of the things that stuck with me however, was how freely the term "violence" gets thrown around. One of the books we read is pretty much considered the guidebook for consensus decision-making process and while it has its uses, it also has some of the most convoluted logic I’ve ever seen.
"On Conflict and Consensus" was originally put out by Boston Food Not Bombs. It contains such gems as:
"Avoid blaming anyone for conflict. Blame is inherently violent. It attacks dignity and empowerment."
And "Nonviolent decisionmakers use their power to achieve goals while respecting differences and cooperating with others. In this environment, it is considered violent to use power to dominate or control the group process."
This kind of simplistic and simpering word acrobatics honestly makes me want to smack someone. If just to say, "See, that’s violence."
I believe that you can use up the power and effectiveness of words by continually expanding their meaning. The actions mentioned above may be fucked up but they are not violent.* It’s like The Left decided the only phrase we can agree on is "non-violence" so everything needs to be run through the violent (BAD!)or non-violent (good) equation. This also contributes to the what-the-hell-are-these-people-talking-about factor already present when activist groups try to communicate with The People.
While no one has ever said to me that clapping is "violent", I could easily argue that point and get a receptive hearing in an activist setting because of the over and misuse of the concept. For example, picture me saying this with a straight face: "When one claps what they are really doing is violently rearranging air molecules, exploiting them into making noise and calling attention to oneself. If we are going to change the world, we need to model non-violent communication. I will now pass the talking stick to Treefrog Rainbowchild"
I could totally derail a meeting. Of course, that would be violence wouldn’t it?
Honestly, I do think that snapping and twinkling came about in meetings as a time-saving process. But people even saying the word "twinkle" kinda creeps me out, not to mention being in a room full of people wiggling their fingers. I hate to overuse the this metaphor but it looks like a Hey-Sister-need-a-backrub army looking for victims. Sane people not Left-acclimated would run for cover at the first sight of this.
Anyways, since were here together talking about bad meeting behavior, I’m going to totally change the subject. Can anyone name anything worse than white activists who yell out things like "Go Sister!", "Tell it" or even "Yessssssss!" only when people of color are speaking? Ick.
Maybe I need to compile a "Creepy Meeting Behavior" zine. I will accept submissions in my comment section.
*I would argue that this also happens when people start discussing the violence of poverty as opposed to the very nature of the capitalist system but that’s an essay for another day because I think there are tactical differences involved.
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October 23rd, 2003
11:56 am - Home from the land of hippies and hot springs
Well, I’m back.
The worker co-op conference was amazing in a lot of ways and annoying only in smaller less meaningful ones. I’ll give you the highlights below, but the actual, non-sarcastic, accomplishment of the conference was how much it’s grown. When I went for the first time six years ago, there were about 50 people there, a monocultural gathering of co-ops that came out of the new social movements of the ‘70s finally ready to poke their heads up again after surviving the Reagan ‘80s and the early ‘90s recession.
Even that conference was inspiring in it’s own way. Just the ability to compare personnel policies, orientation systems, and common problems was a really big deal. But the weaknesses were glaring. For the whole West Coast there were maybe 15 –20 co-ops represented. And of those people, maybe three or four people of color.** While on any real scale worker co-ops remain fairly insignificant, and still have a lot of problems, issues, etc, a lot has changed in the last 6 years.
At that time, Arizmendi* was just a concept and now there are three bakeries. We have the ability to do conflict resolution, facilitation and anti-oppression trainings by and for other co-ops. This conference was sold out at 116 people with about 55 different co-ops and a much larger cross section of humanity represented and involved. Our yearly conference has inspired East Coast and Midwest conferences and made possible a conference to plan a national federation planned for May 2004 in Minneapolis.
It’s just amazing staying with a political project long enough to see progress.
I know you all just really want to hear about naked hippies in hot tubs and bad vegan food. However, since we had so many people this year, we rented the entire place. That meant we didn’t have to endure another Watsu conference or the Hey-Sister-need-a-backrub-posse. And yeah, there were a lot of (no doubt organic) rocks in the food, but it wreaked much less havoc on my digestive system than in years past.
But here are a few memorable moments:
-A person on the panel I was moderating going into a Women who Dance with the Wolves monologue in her section of the workshop. My co-workers kept calling me "Mama Bear" afterwards.
-An ohmming hippie wanker in the sauna who must have hiked into the hot springs past the locked gate cuz he wasn’t with us and wasn’t with Breitenbush.
-When people started snapping non-violently to show their support for things said by others at the conference evaluation session I tried to hold back my look of horror but one co-worker caught and returned it. Hippie-bashing brings our generation together.
-On the car ride home we stopped for food. The waitress asked if we were in a band. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) anarqueso replied that we were grocery store workers on our way back from a co-op conference and she gave us the Whatever look. She obviously thought we were making fun of her.
I’m sure there’s more but I got in at 4 AM and didn’t get enough sleep. And now I have to clean up the mess you left in my journal too. Sheeesh.
*Named for the priest who helped start the Spanish Mondragon Cooperative system, the largest cooperative system in the world. The Cheese Board in Berkeley provided start up money and training to the first Arizmendi bakery who then paid the money back into a revolving loan fund. This fund provides money to the next Arizmendi co-op and the first Arizmendi Bakery provides training. Hopefully this continues until we take over the world.
**at that conference my (Latina) friend from GV (Are you still out there R?) went up to someone who turned out to be Indonesian and said, "Are you Latino?". She got embarrassed when he wasn’t and said she felt like that children’s book character who goes around asking "Are you my mommy?"
Current Music: Rancid - "and out come the wolves"
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July 23rd, 2003
11:26 pm - "God bless ‘Big Stinky’"
I tried to deny my nature but I gave in at the end. I had to go see the dead whale at Ocean Beach.
People forget that San Francisco is really just a big beach town sometimes. Hundreds of people gathered on Monday while City Park officials dug a huge hole and buried a 45 foot dead whale with two tractors and a backhoe. Dude, you just don’t see stuff like that everyday.
It was actually one of the most diverse and kid-friendly events I’d ever been to in SF. All of San Francisco was represented along the yellow and billowing police lines and in the dunes. Even better was that it wasn’t an "event". Certainly it was free, but what I mean is that, despite an annoying (and thankfully ignored)* hippie website trying to promote a drum-circle funeral, people just showed up. There was no ceremony or planned gathering. Willie Brown didn’t keep people waiting as the tide rolled in so he could toss a few one-liners at the carcass before it was buried.** We didn’t have to hear about the dead whale as a metaphor for the environmental destruction of the planet. There were no "Goodbye Obie" t-shirts for sale. There were no forced tears or pious spirituality
No. Just everyone with kids who could skip work and get down to the beach, did. Kids like the beach. Kids like tractors. Kids like smelly old dead whales. How could this not be fun? The Great Highway had illegally parked cars stretching a quarter mile from Lawton Street in each direction. The stench of death seemed exaggerated, but then again, the whale was mostly buried by the time I got there. Close to the burial mound, the ocean breezes kept things manageable, but it did kind of hang in at the edge of the sand dunes.
People came for many reasons I’m sure, but I think mostly because a five-ton, dead whale on the beach is cool. You can only hope to see one every decade or two in a beach town like SF if you’re lucky. I can only imagine how the deprived Midwesters must feel. I just had to make it down to Ocean Beach. Not to pay my respects to the whale, but to appreciate San Francisco and all it has to offer. The cawing of gulls, the salty sea breeze, the crunchy non-native iceplant that those annoying park people are always trying to kill, the smell of rotting cetacean: it all just felt like home.
And proudly, some SF locals sent the whale off in their own way. They tagged it. Park officials were upset. When the graffiti was discovered, National Parks Service spokesman Mike Feinstein was even quoted as saying, "It was obviously somebody who has no respect for marine mammals." But really, we all know those kids were just saying, "Hey sure, we’re a beach town, but we’re an urban beach town!".</i> And let’s not forget that the tags were done after "biologists" skinned large parts of the whale, stole its head and flippers, and were interviewed while "knee deep in whale".
All in all, a wonderful San Francisco event.
*This use of a parenthetical ellipses is dedicated to spoonfeeding
**If The Mayor had been there I would have suggested, "Hey Whale, you smell worse than the Biotic Baking Brigade!"
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June 17th, 2003
08:08 am - Dude, is that polyester? That's not cool.
Many of you know my feelings about Olympia. Though Becca, one of my favorite people, is there, the town itself drives me a little nuts. It’s been called the self-righteousness capital of the country and I wouldn’t disagree. I can do a great Olympia imitation using only the phrase, "That is so fucked up!"
The best example I can give is when I was driving a bunch of Olympians around at Yo-Yo-A-Go-Go one year, and a debate began raging as to whether or not a Dutch punk band* covering a political Hungarian folk song was culturally imperialist. "They’re not Hungarian. That is so fucked up!"
Upon entering the Oly Food Co-op on this visit, I saw a strange sign. It read, "Need a shirt to wear while you’re in the store? Just ask a staff person. We have some nice clean button downs in the back. Thank you from the Co-op Staff" What?
I immediately envisioned a sweat-stained and patchoulied Food Co-op shirt, stinking from the last hippie who wore it, possibly even still damp, and sealed in a plastic bag. I couldn’t help it even though the sign specifically said the customer shirts were clean. I asked Becca, who works there, what was up. Evidently it was a big problem for them. The women in the co-op felt like it was a gender issue because it was always guys who came in with no shirts and lame excuses.** The co-op men met and obtained plain work shirts to provide for in-store use.
I was almost speechless but not quite. Another Olympian and I started brainstorming better ideas for shirts than the current ones:
"How about one that says, ‘I didn’t wear a shirt to the Olympia Food Co-op’ on the front and ‘Need a backrub, Sister?’ on the back?
"A full McDonald’s uniform!"
"A low-cut, best-dressed-breast shirt that laces up the sides."
"A ‘Try burning this one, Asshole!’ American flag shirt!"***
(And since my LJ friends are a smart bunch, I think you all should offer up other suggestions for shirts that I will then forward to my Oly Food Co-op friends.)
After much mocking over the course of many hours, including my accusations of co-dependency and enabling bad hippie male behavior, an exasperated Co-op worker said to me, "Well, what do you do when shirtless guys come into your shop?"
I loved this question because it implies that there’s really a problem. Like their store is the only grocery store in the country that requires shirts for shopping. My Oly friend knew exactly what I was going to say. At the same time we yelled, "Tell ‘em, ‘get the fuck out of the store!’"
*The Ex and Tom Cora "Scrabbling at the Lock": one of my favorite albums.
**My favorite lame hippie dude argument. "That policy seems really regressive. I thought this place was supposed to be progressive."
*** Actually that was suggested by Steve a few days later but I didn’t want to ruin the flow of the story.
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June 18th, 2002
08:13 pm - Will I ever tire of bashing hippies?
So yesterday I criticized The Feederz. But oh, how I appreciate the directness of their sarcasm and pointed comments compared to hippies. Below if my review for Zine World (http://www.undergroundpress.org/) of "Communities" magazine. It won’t be printed until issue #18, so consider this a sneak preview:
Communities "Journal of Cooperative Living" #113 Anyone considering living "in community" should read this. I mean that literally. If you can stand the passive aggressive, new age, pseudo-therapeutic, bullshit masquerading as "communication" within this zine, than it might work for you. This is the "Communication and Process" issue of this long-running publication aimed at (mostly) intentional rural communities (communes) which also contains a "communities" directory and classifieds. It’s not all bad. The article on one community’s solar power successes is interesting. One article on "True Consensus, False Consensus" could be useful. My frustration with this zine is that I agree with the importance of communication and process (I work and live collectively myself), but this issue mostly presents issues of power and language in a way that would make any sane person run for their lives. Words and phrases like "having a clearing", "checking out a fantasy" (not as titillating as it sounds), "non-violent communication" and "pushing my own buttons" do damage to the language and, in my humble opinion, hide the power of skilled manipulators by creating a new set of rules in the name of clarity and process. Unintentionally funny at times, but mostly useful as a flashing neon sign saying "DANGER! If you’re not a hippie, new-ager, or needy process queen STAY AWAY!" Communities Journal of Cooperative Living Rt. 1, Box 156, Rutledge MO 63563, www.ic.org [$6 US $8 world 82M 1:30] –Gordon
But even though I doubled the amount of words I’m supposed to use on a review, I still have more to say.
At first I thought that these people have a fundamental misunderstanding of language. That’s the only way I could figure that they could write/publish some of the inane shit in this magazine. Obviously different communities vary in their belief in the practices of any given issue of "Communities" But the creepy part is how many write in similar veins of therapeutic doublespeak.
The article "Towards Clarity and Honesty (Part 1)" leads off with this gem of an example:
Bill speaks to his best friend Andy because he feels Andy has been giving him the cold shoulder.
"Andy, can I check out a fantasy with you?"
"Sure, go ahead."
"My fantasy is that you think I’m a bad person because I was late to the meeting this morning. Do you think I’m a bad person?"
Ugh. Isn’t Bill pathetic? In his mind he jumps from being late for one meeting, (he’s described earlier as being the most punctual person in the group) into feeling that people think he’s a worthless human being. Isn’t living in "community" supposed to help your self-esteem? Not only that, but he manipulates the situation away from his fuck up (being late) into passive aggressively making Andy tell him he’s not a "bad person". Andy should say, "I thought we were best friends and now you’re all (whiney voice)’am I a bad person’ cuz I didn’t say hi to you or something. You were late, don’t make this about my feelings. Have some self-respect you needy little shit."
But no, direct communication and a flair for talented insults and clever word choice are frowned upon in the name of "process". There’s even an editorial piece at the beginning of this issue that warns against joking in meetings lest you be misunderstood. "Towards Clarity. . ." is all about using new phrases to prevent misunderstandings. The "Can I share a fantasy?" formulation is meant to acknowledge that an issue might only be going on in the initiator’s head. Fine. But what’s wrong with, "Hey, are you mad at me?"
Language is complex. Duh. You can’t take away misunderstanding, power and hierarchy by playing word games. It’s as if they think that you can take all the potential hurt out of words and process it away. You can "have a clearing" instead of saying what’s on your mind. You can "share fantasies" (yeah, there’s a phrase that’s impervious to misunderstanding and abuse) instead of saying, "what’s up?". But really it’s just creating a language that’s more insular, mysterious to outsiders and isn’t really any more clear.
I actually visited Twin Oaks (one of the communes involved in "Communities") in 1993. It was interesting on many levels, but one of the most striking things was the absolute disinterest on the part of community members about anything going on outside the land they lived on. Everywhere else I went people asked about SF and cities we were visiting. At Twin Oaks it was (I can’t remember the exact language, I’m sure it was more obscure) "Are you going to join Twin Oaks?" They had created a lot of great systems for involving community members in decisions but they actually had to pass out a glossary of terms used at Twin Oaks so we could understand what they were talking about. Again, how does this achieve clarity of process?
Later on in "Communities" I just decided that they hate language. How else can one interpret the following sentences?
"We wanted a ‘co-creative community’ – reflecting the integration of feminine and masculine virtues and whole-centered consciousness . . .This alignment of Self to Self, horizontally and vertically, is what we mean by ‘co-creation’."
Obviously utter nonsense of course. But what’s beyond it? I wish I could believe it was a carefully crafted, neo-Dadaist protest of the impreciseness of the written word. I’d disagree but appreciate the effort. Or maybe a Trojan horse-style word bomb? I know when I read too much of this type of crap I have a harder time thinking clearly. Maybe a KGB-planted time bomb wired before the end of the Soviet Bloc? I can’t think of any other way to explain the disregard to common practices of avoiding redundancy, avoiding random capitalization and having an overall, understandable series of words.
But finally I settled on the idea that these linguistic challenges are simply power grabs and control issues dressed up in "democratic" and new age robes. Check out this passage by a regular columnist:
"My roommates had decided to have a party in the middle of the night. I was not amused. After letting them know exactly what I thought of them, I went to get someone to referee. Imagine my surprise when he pointed out that I was the one making myself upset!"
In most articles in this issue there are references to "Making oneself upset", "Pushing one’s own buttons" and other examples of warmed over ‘70s self-actualization. In the above citation (which at least attempts to be lively, style-wise), the columnist realizes that he/she can’t control other people so they just need to let their anger go. I can’t think of an example better suited to the maintenance of established power.
In fact, the answers to most of the problems posed in these pages are all about looking within for answers. Introspection and self-examination have their place of course, but inward looking thought combined with a paranoid obsession with process and "non-violent communication" always leaves me looking for who’s really in control. Tools for "democracy" can become tools of manipulation rather easily, especially as language is rarefied into more and more esoteric constructions. In these situations, it’s usually the most skilled at word games who can keep deflecting issues away from their own actions and towards their feelings.
"When you got mad at me for partying and waking you up, it made me feel that you don’t appreciate all the work I do to make Commune X a wonderful place. It makes me feel like you think I’m a bad person. Do you think I’m a bad person?"
As for process, read "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" (http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm) and move on. Even if the author is some reform Democrat these days, It’s the best thing ever written about collective process.
Current Music: Warlock Pinchers "Circusized Peanuts"
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