Nowtopian

Road Blockades

I’m far away from my normal routines, enjoying a beautiful stay at Blue Mountain Center in New York’s Adirondacks. Some beautiful pictures are below. But here’s a quick note on blocking roads, increasingly the practical form of a “social sit-down” spreading across the world. The Argentinean piqueteros made great use of it a few years ago, and the Bolivians used it to bring down four presidents in two years. Now the Mexicans are filling the streets of Mexico City, Oaxaca and other parts of the country, refusing to return to the docility that the ruling elite has built their power on for all these years. Check out a good piece from La Jornada by way of Narco News.

Another interesting article popped up on the increasingly indispensable Asia Times today, regarding Hezbollah’s successful interception of Israeli battlefield communications, concluding that the the impunity that has ruled First World/Third World warfare up to the present is no longer possible. A notable leveling has taken place, proven in the recent conflict, which will either lead to more diplomacy or more extreme violence… guess which one the current crop of war criminals will opt for?

Anyway, here’s a couple of shots from Castle Rock which is a half hour climb from Blue Mtn. Lake’s shore.

This picture shows where BMC is, on the adjacent Eagle Lake.

Continue reading Road Blockades

I like New York!

Got in to NY the past Monday night. A ridiculous flight plan through Phoenix and Chicago finally got me to Newark at 11:30. Waited a while for a bus and rode in to midtown Manhattan with a Chinese fellow who regaled me with tales of his family’s financial deals at home. He’s here to study business at NYU for a year and a half and then go back and join the ascendent Chinese bourgeoisie who are rapaciously exploiting every contract and development they can insert themselves into…

News from Mexico continues to keep us all breathless with curiosity and hope. Just got sent a link to a very impressive website in Oaxaca. Here, for those of you who have visited Oaxaca as a tourist, is a shot that you may recognize, just to the side of the Zocalo, littered with the camping gear of the occupying teachers after they were attacked in July by police and troops.

For fans of historic photos of Mexican revolutionaries this pic will resonate too:

Visiting New York for a week is always a blast, even if it means bleeding money everywhere you go. I’m staying with Chris W., one of my oldest friends, and it’s been sweet to hang out and talk late into the night, drinking and commiserating over the craziness of our respective lives and the larger world we’re still kicking in… here we are last night in a bar in the lower East Side after the talk I gave at Bluestockings on my forthcoming book:

Continue reading I like New York!

Disaster Bicycling

Critical Mass this past Friday night commemorated the Katrina Hurricane and the destruction of New Orleans by following a route along the “future shoreline” of San Francisco (a group called Rising Tide North America put the call out for nationwide rides in solidarity with New Orleans and about 28 cities went for it). Last night I checked out three of four hours of Spike Lee’s “When the Levees Broke”… a very interesting piece, terribly sad, rather long and meandering, slow pacing, characterized as a “requiem” and indeed it is… hard to imagine the black community of New Orleans recovering from the massive displacement and brutal treatment they endured. It broke my own wall of amnesia about how enraged I was while that was happening just one year go. It’s hard to live with that kind of anger and relative helplessness, so like most people I pushed it away and got on with my life, not thinking about the situation down there too much or too often… Even though I have good friends working with the Common Ground effort and I have contributed a bit… anyway, it felt good to have Critical Mass showing some solidarity with the ongoing effort to recover in New Orleans, and connect to global warming, climate change, disaster preparedness (we’ll probably have another big quake before we get flooded by rising oceans, but who knows?)…

Not everyone was thrilled by the appearance of flyers with a proposed route (pdf), but most people seemed pretty happy about an organized theme for a change (we used to do it all the time during the first few years from 1992-96 or so). We made 2000 stickers and put them around town along the route a couple of hours before the ride, but they weren’t really properly sized: too big for putting on your bicycle, and too small to be seen while riding or going by in a car…